Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@×××××××.net>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Enterprise deployment tools
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 14:46:20
Message-Id: 42B97931.7050306@cesmail.net
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Enterprise deployment tools by Thierry Carrez
1 Thierry Carrez wrote:
2
3 >Hi folks,
4 >
5 >I would like to get your opinion on Enterprise-oriented desktop
6 >deployment tools for Gentoo Linux (or the lack of).
7 >
8 >As a small company CIO, I deployed Gentoo on a small scale here but
9 >quickly ran into scaling problems and the lack of tools to help.
10 >
11 >There is no obvious way to freeze a Portage tree (or to design a
12 >specific profile) for testing on a golden workstation, to build a set of
13 >update packages (ServicePack) and push it to the workstations, or to
14 >have centralized accountability of what's installed where. There is no
15 >easy way to avoid having to keep a synchronized copy of the portage tree
16 >on all systems, even when using yourown-binaries.
17 >
18 >With automatic deployments, would we run into difficult-to-solve
19 >etc-update problems ? Should/could the ServicePack system take care of
20 >that ?
21 >
22 >Even in a simpler setup (preprod > production) we don't have the tools
23 >to push a software configuration change from a test machine to a
24 >production one.
25 >
26 >What tools are missing ? Is it our job to provide them ? Can it
27 >reasonably be done ? Am I just wrong to want to use Gentoo in that
28 >direction ?
29 >
30 >Next week: Gentoo-as-a-metadistribution tools :)
31 >
32 >
33 I'm not sure some of the assumptions you and other posters have made are
34 valid for the specific case of a "enterprise network of workstations and
35 servers" in a Linux environment, or, for that matter, in a Windows-based
36 enterprise. First of all, why would a "workstation" need to have *any*
37 software installed on its hard drive at all? You can boot the OS off the
38 network, load executables off the network, read shared data off the
39 network, and even create a cluster for large computations over the
40 network. The only thing that needs to reside on the workstation's hard
41 drive is the unique data representing the workstation user's
42 *legitimate* business requirements and contributions, and any desktop
43 customizations/unique configuration files. In the ancient days, when
44 workstation hard drives were tiny, that's how it was done.
45
46 PCs in enterprises, whether Linux, Windows, Macs or other flavors,
47 resemble home computers only because some enterprises think it's
48 necessary to "retain talented employees", not because they actually need
49 to have a browser, OS, office suite, email, virus scanner, etc., loaded
50 on their desktop machines. I work in a Windows environment, and I've got
51 all that stuff on my PC, taking up disk space that could be used by the
52 large amounts of data I work with as a performance engineer. The only
53 software on my machine that needs to be there that wouldn't normally be
54 on everyone's machine in the enterprise is a few high-end analysis
55 packages like R and Maxima.
56
57 So ... the problem actually reduces to deployment/management tools for
58 *servers*, I think, plus a crew of IT folks who can rescue users who
59 manage to hose up the home directory on their workstation, the only
60 place in the building they can actually write into. :)
61 --
62 gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Enterprise deployment tools Jim Northrup <glamdring-inc@×××××××.net>