[WBEL-users] Enterprise Managment Suggestions

[Tony]

This is where I'm coming from:

I have a setup that will be about 500 workstations, and a handfull of servers.
About 500 or so users as well.

What we need is a way to *centrally* manage the PCs and users, not the 
traditional Unix way of managing them on the workstation.. ( running them as
dumb X terminals isn't the solution here, due to bandwidth ). That sort of
'management' just isn't practical at this level.

By 'manage' the users:  central database of logins, and policy rights. LDAP 
makes the most sence here of course. All workstations need to hit the LDAP 
server for authentication, and 'policies'.

Need the ability to create and manage the 'directory' from several locations 
( this part isn't hard i realize as LDAP can be accessed remotely. )

I'm still messing with kiosk mode for KDE for desktop control, and if that 
does a good enough job ill want to head that direction as well, but that 
would need to also tie back to groups defined in the 'directrory server'.

Manage the desktops:  Again, central database control. Need to be able to
create groups of workstations, so as to install/remove applications with out
having to touch each workstation manually, ( even remotely ). 

I know things such as ssh and webmin can do this remotely, but its still a 
manual, one by one process.

I guess it just boils down to managing the entire enterprise via 'policies', 
from a central location.. not ever having to touch a PC manually unless it 
dies, and having *all* software policy, and login information stored on a 
central directory.

Those of us from a large windows enterprise know what I'm talking about 
when i speak of SMS, GPO and AD.. thats what i want to emulate, as much
as is possible..

Enterprise monitoring, thats taken care of as there are plenty of 'enterprise' 
monitoring tools.. 



>
> Message: 9
> Subject: Re: [WBEL-users] Enterprise Managment Suggestions
> From: Dan Geist <Dan.Geist@cox.com>
> To: Tony@instaview.com
> Cc: whitebox-users@beau.org
> Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:58:40 -0500
>
> Tony, That sounds like a perfectly good topic! I wish more people would
> talk about management tools in the open-source community, but that's not
> to say there's not lots of stuff out there.
>
> The question arises... what exactly are your goals? Also, what types of
> machines are you managing?
>
> I worked at a place that had a RH Linux developer core with windows
> bus-dev folks. A few cleverly-crafted small scripts were all that was
> needed to maintain the developers hosts (nightly updates, etc).
>
> I have some WBEL hosts currently that utilize central authentication
> sources using PAM_TACPLUS (so they can share user resources with routers
> and switches, etc..).
>
> So... what are you trying to do, exactly?
>
> Dan
>
> On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 09:41, Tony wrote:
> > Sorry if this is a tad OT, but does anyone have suggestions for
> > 'enterprise management' tools?
> >
> > Having to manage a whole department of machines separately is a drag.
> > What is needed is
> > something like Microsoft's' GPO/Active Directory..
> >
> > Short of writing a whole bunch of scripts ( and perhaps a GUI for our
> > 'admins' ) on my own,
> > what all have you people dealt with that can do the same sort of job? And
> > preferably GPL or
> > BSD licensed..
>
> --
> Dan Geist | dan.geist@cox.com | (404)269-6822
> Network Security Engineer | Telephony/Data Eng | Cox Communications
>