Plan for the configuration management proof of concept

Goal: Run a proof of concept program to automate the provisioning of our standard application server build process using a proper configuration management tool,

The end result will be a decision on which configuration management utility we will be using to replace our current "Deploy configuration using RPMs" method, which admittedly is a 1000 times better than doing everything manually, but does lack both full automation of deployments and scalability. The primary limitation of the RPM method is that it is push by design rather than pull.

Things to do

• Setup KVM with dnsmasq to spin up multiple VMs (One puppet/cfengine server, one NFS server and one NFS client)
• Setup Cobbler to provision the VMs using CentOS 5.5
• Boot strap cfengine, then puppet into the build of above mentioned VMs
• Perform all configuration through both cfengine and puppet

Things I want to get out of the proof of concept

• Which solution is best for adding mounts, packages and making configuration changes to files
• Which solution will best fit the needs of my business aligned team and the operations team, most of whom have never used configuration management
• Which solution can best automate our patching procedure.
• Which solution has the best documentation and the best bang for the buck in terms of the team learning it. 

Spent Tonight Playing with Cobbler

... Pretty interesting stuff. Combined with the dnsmasq used with KVM, I think this will make a nice little test lab for my configuration management tool bakeoff. Now for bed, up in 4 and a half hours.

Things that have my attention right now

• Puppet/Cfengine
• Func
• Cobbler
• yum
• KVM

Blah

As the description says, this blog is an attempt to document my adventure in moving an Enterprise UNIX Group from our current ways of doing things to a more agile approach. The topics covered will be Linux (in our case RedHat) and Configuration Management tools. I will be conducting a small proof of concept between Puppet 2.6.x and Cfengine 3.x to see which tool suits our needs best.

I am a Solaris Administrator of the old school variety (just kicked the ksh habit) and with the help of some colleagues am learning more and more about Linux, the details of which I will attempt to post here.