Kwan Lowe wrote:
>I've recently added two more machines: an Athlon 2500 XP (Barton) and a
>900MhZ refurb ($100). These two bring to fourteen the number of physical
>machines on the network. Add another dozen or so VMWare installations
>for various customer projects and it's more than a hobby to maintain
>them. It's at the point now where it's getting physically and
>logistically difficult to patch this mix of Linux (Mandrake, Debian,
>RedHat8/9, Fedora) Solaris (8/9 on Sparc/Intel), Windows2K. I'm
>interested in what solutions you (and others) use to manage multiple
>architectures.
>
Mostly, I run around in circles trying to keep up. Heh.
At the moment, I'm only directly responsible for three machines locally
and machines on clients' networks when the clients call me up and say
"Our network is broken! Do we have to buy a new Internet?" Of the
three locally, one is a testbed that I use strictly for installing
whatever the heck work demands I learn something about, one is my
primary desktop (Windows, alas, because I must have a Windows
workstation handy for compatibility with work-related stuff), and the
aforementioned Cyrix/Debian box. I'm only secondarily responsible for
anything on the strictly business network (less than ten nodes all told)
because I don't get to make the decisions about what is on the network,
so I'm not primarily responsible for any problems that might arise as a
result.
So. I don't have fourteen computers for which I'm directly responsible
on a daily basis. As such, the running-in-circles method is quite
sufficient for my needs at the moment.
If there is not some specific reason to be so diversified in your choice
of distributions, I might suggest standardizing on one (or two, if need
be) distros to cut down on administrative overhead, however. Depending
on how you manage your Win2k machines (and how many you have), you might
think about running one box as a server to manage the Win2k boxen. The
idea would be to mirror or otherwise create an image from the primary,
which you administrate directly, on a regular basis (perhaps nightly)
and, from there, re-image the bootable drives on the other Win2K
machines. I imagine something similar could be done for a slew of Linux
machines if they could be that standardized, but my suspicion is that
you have far more need for configuration individuation on the Linux
boxen. If you went the image route with the Win2k machines, you would
probably want to either have all of them store individuated data on a
fileserver or on a second drive locally, of course. I have been called
upon to help out with the administration of a Windows domain that was
managed similarly to the manner I describe, which simplified the process
of administrating a network of forty nodes considerably. This,
obviously, doesn't work so well if they're all on widely variable
hardware, however.
Ultimately, if this isn't a production environment with its own budget,
you might eventually have to think about simply cutting down on the
number of machines. You could also section off a subnet that is
individually protected (separate firewall, et cetera) for machines whose
functionality will (effectively) never have to change/grow and will
never have to involve heavy communication outside that subnet, and
simply let them run in peace without doing upgrades. Old software will
generally continue to run as well as it ever did, and if it isn't
connected to the outside world it doesn't need to be protected against
it by constant security updates.
Or . . . hire an intern.
-- Chad Perrin @political [apotheon.com] for the lazy middle-class intellectual a:c [apotheon.net] broken home apocryphagia [apotheon.org] watch what you eat----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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