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Questions tagged [configuration-management]

Configuration Management refers to establishing and maintaining standardized system configurations within an organization. This tag encompasses the process of defining the configuration profiles, and the software used to manage and deploy it.

Configuration Management refers to establishing and maintaining standardized system configurations within an organization.

This tag encompasses the process of defining the configuration profiles, and the software used to manage and deploy it, such as , , and .

370 questions
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How can the little guys effectively learn and use Puppet?

Six months ago, in our not-for-profit project we decided to start migrating our system management to a Puppet-controlled environment because we are expecting our number of servers to grow substantially between now and a year from now. Since the…
drumfire
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Why use Chef/Puppet over shell scripts?

New to Puppet and Chef tools. Seems like the job that they are doing can be done with shell scripting. Maybe it was done in shell scripts until these came along. I would agree they are more readable. But, are there any other advantages over shell…
resting
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5 answers

Choosing between meaningful and meaningless hostnames

Assume an environment with a puppet-managed cluster of different servers - various hardware, software, operating systems, virtual/dedicated, etc. Would you choose meaningful hostnames (mysqlmaster01..99, mysqlslave001..999, vpnprimary, vpnbackup,…
keymone
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2 answers

Why is it so difficult to upgrade between major versions of Red Hat and CentOS?

"Can we upgrade our existing production EL5 servers to EL6?" A simple-sounding request from two customers with completely different environments prompted my usual best-practices answer of "yes, but it will require a coordinated rebuild of all of…
ewwhite
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71
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6 answers

What should NOT be managed by puppet?

I'm learning my way through configuration management in general and using puppet to implement it in particular, and I'm wondering what aspects of a system, if any, should not be managed with puppet? As an example we usually take for granted that…
Luke404
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6 answers

Puppet vs Chef, pro and contra from users and use cases

I already googled and read the "to-puppet-or-to-chef-that-is-the-question" article. I'm interested in use cases, real world implementations in which people had choosen one or the other on real problems bases. I'm particularly interested in…
drAlberT
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12 answers

How to record server changes?

So we've all probably had this situation: you debug some problem, only to realize it was caused by a config change you made six months ago, and you can't remember why you did it. So you undo it and fix the problem, and now some other problem comes…
scobi
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1 answer

Chef best Practices/Questions

I use and love Puppet. I moved to a new company and they are adopting Chef. So I'm trying to learn Chef but am having a hard time piecing it all together because I still think in Puppet =) These are my questions: Is it better to setup roles in…
rizen
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44
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2 answers

How do I enable additional debugging output from Ansible and Vagrant?

I am investigating Ansible for server and application provisioning. My application is currently provisioned with shell scripts in Vagrant. Rather than rewriting my scripts, I took a sample and attempted to deploy it. It appears to deploy fine, but I…
Brian Lyttle
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40
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0 answers

What advantages/features does Puppet or Chef offer over Salt (or vice versa)?

I am looking at rolling out a new configuration management tool to replace our home-grown solution. The defacto standards are Chef and Puppet, both of which are Ruby-centric (though can be used to deploy non-Ruby environment, obviously). The vast…
jamieb
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38
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8 answers

What tool do you recommend to track changes on a Linux/Unix server

I manage several Linux servers for clients in several roles like email, caching, web serving, filtering, firewalling/routing, and so on. Since I don't own these computers and just provide remote support, central management systems like Puppet don't…
Zoredache
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2 answers

Is Configuration Management useable for a small number of servers?

If I use something like Ansible or Puppet, and I only have two servers, is that defeating the purpose of using these products? I thought that if I configured one server, I could use one of these to duplicate it on the other.
johnny
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31
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7 answers

How to handle SSH port changes with Ansible?

I'm trying to use Ansible for automating the setup process of new server instances. One of the setup tasks changes the default SSH port, therefore requiring me to update the hosts list. Is it possible to automate this by having Ansible fallback to a…
Miko
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3 answers

How can I manage hundreds of IPMI BMCs?

I have over 200 computers which can provide IPMI services. The servers are manufactured by several different companies (SuperMicro, Dell, etc.), and there are 6-7 BMC models from about 5 different vendors, and each model has it's own…
Stefan Lasiewski
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5 answers

How can a Linux Administrator improve their shell scripting and automation skills?

In my organization, I work with a group of NOC staff, budding junior engineers and a handful of senior engineers; all with a focus on Linux. One interesting step in the way the company grows talent is that there's a path from the NOC to the senior…
ewwhite
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