On 01/20/2015 08:41 AM, Tom Grace wrote:> I would suggest that the "right way" would be to kickstart all your > machines the same way, and then use a configuration management tool > (like Puppet or Chef) to customize themSeconded. Personally, I recommend either ansible or bcfg2 over other tools. Puppet has a larger user base, but when I talk to users at conferences (such as LISA), ansible and bcfg2 users tend to like their tools, while an awful lot of people dislike Puppet but use it anyway due to inertia.
On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 3:14 PM, Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer at gmail.com> wrote:> >> I would suggest that the "right way" would be to kickstart all your >> machines the same way, and then use a configuration management tool >> (like Puppet or Chef) to customize them > > > Seconded. > > Personally, I recommend either ansible or bcfg2 over other tools. Puppet has > a larger user base, but when I talk to users at conferences (such as LISA), > ansible and bcfg2 users tend to like their tools, while an awful lot of > people dislike Puppet but use it anyway due to inertia.There's also saltstack which is one of the newer of the bunch. It has some chance of working reasonably across different platforms. How you feel about it will probably depend on how you feel about python in general - and how you expect upgrades to go in the future. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Les Mikesell wrote:> Gordon Messmer wrote: > >> I would suggest that the "right way" would be to kickstart all your > >> machines the same way, and then use a configuration management tool > >> (like Puppet or Chef) to customize them > > > > Seconded. > > > > Personally, I recommend either ansible or bcfg2 over other tools. Puppet has > > a larger user base, but when I talk to users at conferences (such as LISA), > > ansible and bcfg2 users tend to like their tools, while an awful lot of > > people dislike Puppet but use it anyway due to inertia. > > There's also saltstack which is one of the newer of the bunch. It has > some chance of working reasonably across different platforms. How > you feel about it will probably depend on how you feel about python in > general - and how you expect upgrades to go in the future.Take a look at Cobbler. I use this to create about 40 servers. Works really well, produces customized kickstarts, has a web GUI as well as command line operation, has lots of nice features to get the job done.