Hello all.


We're setting up a centralized server from which we can access all other servers in our organization. The idea is to use this server for deploying scripts (typically perl, python, or shell) on our servers by logging in, running the scripts, and retreiving the result (exit code or whatever).

I'm sure every organization has a similar scheme. So what I'm look for is basically some advice one possible pitfalls and such.

One idea I have is to set up some sort of "framework" for our scripts. I haven't thought this through, but I imagine that there must be possible to create a simple framework to reduce the possiblity of deploying an erroneous script throughout the enterprise.

By such a framework I'm actually thinking of a (set of) script(s) into which one can pass parameters describing what information one need to retreive from the servers, what needs to be executed, which servers to deploy this on, and so forth. For example, if the "framwork script" took one parameter in which the set of servers are listed, and another parameter the command that needs to be executed on these servers, maybe one could use this to reduce the possiblity of error.

I'm not sure if what I'm looking for is very clear, and in that case please comment on this.

Regards,
kenneho

Sounds to me you're looking for CFengine to help accomplish this. Very powerful, can do what you want with more features than you probably need.

http://cfengine.org

You can use Puppet, by Reductive Labs ...
its the "new kid around", that replaces the older CFengine

Very nice declarative lang
http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet

Thanks for the replies.

We're actually allready using Puppet, and it solves many of our needs regarding configurating the servers.

I'm not yet a Puppet expert, but there seems to be some thing best left to plain old scripts: If we, for example, need to gather information about whether the file systems on our servers have been mounted cleanly, or just run a few commands to check disk space, I'm not sure Puppet is the best way to go. It sound better to simply have a small shell/perl/python script executed on the serveres, and fetch the result to be stored on the centralized SSH server.

I may be that I underestimate the functionality of Puppet, but I don't think puppet is designed for cases such as this.


Regards,
kenneho

Well, there is a nice tool called func
check it out ...

Where can I find this tool?

Thanks I'll check it out.