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Systems Management Server Equivalent for Linux?
em_tasol asks: "While tearing my hair out trying to manage an expanding network and keep the 'Standard' in 'Standard Operating Environment', someone suggested we use Microsoft's Systems Management Server for many tasks that we currently run around doing manually. We are using a Linux-based Samba PDC at the moment, and installing SMS would require a total infrastructure rethink, because it appears to require a Windows PDC to install itself and SQL Server. Does anyone know how I might put something together in the Linux environment that will be compatible with a Samba NT4 domain environment that will perform the same sort of functions as SMS?"
If you need software distribution, inventory collection, etc. Novadigm's products are thoroughly cross-platform (Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Linux, etc.) and best-of-breed. Kind of pricey though. How big is your installation?
Maybe you want more, but what you described (automating jobs) can be done with cron jobs and shell/perl scripts.
Don't buy a horse from the next town over when you've already got one in the barn.
It's all going according to
IBM Tivoli encompasses a suite of systems management products that work much like SMS.
since you dont give us much to go on in terms of what you want to do, or how much you want to pay, tivoli should cover all the bases. otherwise have you checked sourceforge? or even google?
like the MCSE guys, but I don't have the money in my budget for SMS licenses. Can you help me?
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Novell's Zenworks is the other big player on this field. Unlike Active Directory [which requires Microsoft PDCs & BDCs], Novell's underlying NDS [or eDirectory, or whatever they're calling it this week] can run on Linux. Last I checked, there were aspects of Zenworks that were NetWare specific [although I believe they are working to port the entire package to non-NetWare platforms], but with NDS, you can tie in all your Linux servers.
SMS is costly and difficult. Depending on the size of your IT department, SMS is probably overkill. After investigating SMS, we went with Citrix, which provides an architecture for Windows which is similar (please forgive the gross generalization) to X (client-server remote apps).
Install the software once, and all users have remote access. Citrix allows for all sorts of OSs to connect, as well. There are Windows, Mac, Linux, Win CE, PocketPC, etc clients, so all of your users have access to a Windows Desktop with Windows apps.
If you have no need for non-Windows clients, check out Microsoft Terminal Server. Same thing, but only Windows clients. The benefit is cheaper licensing -- if you buy Citrix for Windows 2000, you have to pay Terminal Server licensing as well. (Sorta like paying the mob for "protection").
Citrix is much easier to manage than SMS, and does not require an entire Windows infrastructure -- just a few servers. Figure 50 users (Office, Internet, Custom Apps, NOT streaming media or video games) per server. An office of 150 people will need ~3 servers (give or take, depending on usage.)
Combo Citrix with a good Windows X server (Cygwin is free), and you have a great cross-platform solution for any desktop using apps for Windows and Unix, simultaneously!!!!
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
SMS's features are, according to MS:
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= /library/en-us/script56/html/wsconwshwmi.asp ) describes this.
- Software distribution
- Asset Management
- Remote Troubleshooting
Lets look at the software distribution bit first. Mainly this is used for os patches and virus scanner updates. If your people have access to WindowsUpdate.com they already can get the first lot, and for the second, you can often just copy the
For asset management, microsoft's software inventory amounts to scanning for files with a given extension. Matching this to software versions is trivial with a perl script, and a bit of data capture to start with. Hardware inventory is barely more complex and its easy to write a script to do the job.
Remote troubleshooting amounts to the same functionality you get from VNC.
So to sum up, to emulate SMS you need a hook to run some scripts and copy files to & from the net when the user logs in, plus VNC. Your samba environment has a login script directive which you can use as the startup hook. Clearly you have file sharing down. So all thats left is to get some appropriate scripts to run.
This is partly a matter of your personal preference. SMS itself uses the WMI interface to gather info, which coincidentally is easily accessible via windows vbs/js scripting, and it should already be installed on all these machines. The WSH manual ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url
If your environment is small and reasonably well controlled you have other options available. Booting machines off the network, for example. Mounting a central apps drive is another, though crappy for laptop users - then you only need to manage the registries remotely, which regedit can already do. Manipulating multiple registries remotely, eg using perl, isnt difficult, and you can do this to set 'runonce' scripts up over the network to do installs.
Anyway hope this gives you some ideas.
I'd suggest that you take a look at Caldera's (now SCO, again) Volution Manager. It offers the same features for Unix systems, that M$ SMS offers for Windows. Plus, it can be integrated into larger enterprise management platforms like Unicenter and Tivoli should your needs grow so large. Also, if you are a Compaq/HP shop, Volution Manager integrates with Compaq's Insight Manager which is fabulous for hardware management.
Novell's Zenworks for Servers and Zenworks for Desktops are awesome management packages. Sadly they focus their support on Novell servers (only natural) and Windows Desktops.
While it is true that Zenworks for Servers does support Solaris and Linux servers, the support is fairly limited, pretty much just starting and stopping services. The Zenworks for Desktops package supports Windows destops and offers some limited support for PDAs but not for Linux.
Now, if Zenwoks for Desktops fully supported Linux desktops, that would be perhaps the most amazing management app for Linux.
I would kill to have Novell's Snapshot utility on Linux. With Snapshot, you scan a system, then you install and configure your application. Next you scan the system again and Snapshot identifies all configuration and file changes or changes in the registry and then builds them into a "package". This package can then be distributed and installed, repaired, or uninstalled on any and all specified systems by just a few clicks in NDS. M$ SMS offers a similar system but Snapshot from Novell is a lot easier to work with and seems a fair bit faster to me.
Arguably the king of Perl programming in the windows environment, Dave Roth a few years ago wrote a perl and SQL based solution that provides much of what SMS can do. I don't know if he still has it anywhere on his site anylonger. If he does the full code that he used as well as a lengthy description of how to configure it was provided. You might want to have a look there. Dave is the author of some of the most essential Perl Modules for any Witendoze systems administrator's toolbox. Good Luck.
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The typical provincial or county government has departments that span 50 different vertical markets, each with their own specialty software vendors competing for a chunk of the budget. I don't doubt that it is an IT nightmare but the diverse demands of government go a step or two beyond the typical corporate user.
Bleh!
This might seem every so slightly off topic, but can anyone explain what features are missing in an "NT-style" domain controller? Last I checked, this was all the Samba could provide, and while we've considered moving to Samba, I need to know what we'd give up by doing so.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
There are a large number of other products that perform similar functions to SMS without requiring NT domains (althought most do need a WinNT/2k server to run on).
We use Altiris Deployment Solution at work, and while I do run it on a Win2k AD domain and SQL Server, it's not a requirement. You just need a WinNT/2k server. We use it to deploy hard drive images, software packages and patches, PC settings migrations, and remote control. There are also plug-in packages that allow for inventory and helpdesk solutions integrated into the same database.
Sounds like BackOrifice ought to do the trick!
Try setting up LTSP -- Linux Terminal Server Project. (www.ltsp.org)
It is far superior on costs and function to what you seem to be doing now.
M. McCarty
just do it right and get sms instead of trying to concoct some halfbaked open-source solution that is going to be just as much a pain in the a.. as the original problem. once you learn sms you'll love it and you'll literally be able to do the same work it would take 100 people a week in a single lunch hour. try it, love it, use it.