Managing Multiple Servers

zokken · 01-14-2009, 10:10 AM

I'm curious how people go about managing multiple servers, for example, updating a package on a couple dozen machines. Writing a script which uses ssh key-pairs + ssh-agent works fine, but I'm just curious if other people have different approaches.

ncsuapex · 01-14-2009, 10:25 AM

I use the ssh+keys and a script to update servers. It depends on the situation though. If I only need to update say 5 of the servers I use the

Quote:

for i in `cat hostnames`
do

and just add the hostnames to that file. That way I can control which servers get the updates. I also have a file that has all the hostnames if I need to update them all.

It's SO handy to do it this way. Plus I can use the script to check the status of services and to start them if I need to. I would love to hear of other ways though that could be even better.

ilikejam · 01-14-2009, 12:49 PM

I'm told it's a bit of a beast to set up, but cfengine is the weapon of choice for full centralised control of Unix hosts:

http://www.cfengine.org/

Never used it myself, though. I go for the ssh keys and scripts approach too.