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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?
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?
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:
.dat file to the correct directory.
= /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!
Why is this good? It save the IT department a lot of time (typically the most expensive factor), and it means that when you break something we can have a part on-site to replace it. It also means everything works right because we don't have to deal with the fact that your machine has this little quirk in it...
SIG: HUP
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
Keeping consistency (within reason) across an enterprise is both extremely difficult, but also has the potential to save an organization a whole lot of money. In my organization, we do enforce certain standards to make it possible for our business to be conducted efficiently. We do not allow users to install their own software, for example. Why, you ask? It's certainly not because we're "Nazis". We want to avoid potential legal (licensing) problems, potential security problems and want to keep as much stability as we can so that business can be conducted.
This isn't completely about control -- this is about providing users with the tools that they need to do their jobs while at the same time protecting the company from legal liability and providing adequate security.
As for the whole "fiddling" thing - probably not worthy of termination. And I don't know if I could explain my view right now anyway - it's been a rough night. But control over a network is half the job of the admin...
SIG: HUP
That's what I was talking about. Nobody has one individual, wonky machine that needs its own image. Everyone has a standardized box. See my first post on all this...
SIG: HUP
What's the biggest network you've ever managed?
The fact that you're trying to turn this into some kind of dick measuring contest just proves the OP's point--power hunger is a personality flaw common in those insufficiently intelligent to program computers who end up "administering" or "managing" them.
I take it you're a programmer, then.
Since you're a programmer, you realize that working on real projects with other people requires more structure then just noodling around with toy programming projects at home.
It also takes more structure to keep a company full of machines working then it does to keep a home machine or two running.
BTW, if you don't like dick-size-wars, what's with the "those insufficiently intelligent to program computers who end up "administering" or "managing" them" crack? I've seen a wide range of clue and experience among both programmers and sysadmins.
>Fair enough--I just felt like I was replying in the
>same spirit as your message.
My original message wasn't intended to be pissy.
However, I often find that people who haven't managed large numbers of computers don't understand the issues as well as they'd like to think.
>"Structure" is not the same as intrusive,
>bureaucratic controls that get in the way of the
>machines actually being used--structure is good,
>and can be accomplished without excessive control.
> However, once IT sees an opportunity to gain
>power, it often uses a TCO argument to control
>everything.
That will depend on where you work, i.e. the culture of the company and the personalities involved.
I've had a lot of jobs, and I've seen everything from concentration-camp style lockdown to utter anarchy.
Ridiculous amounts of central control- You couldn't install any software on the machines unless it was in the "magic install program". To get a piece of software into the "magic install program" took weeks or even months. (Oh, and the keepers of the install program might just tell you to fuck off, that technology wasn't "approved", and you'd have to find another way to get the task accomplished.) It took me over a month to find a politically correct way to get AS/400 connectivity for local users.
Complete anarchy- supporting University profs and their labs. Profs had their own research budgets, so they bought whatever they wanted. One gentleman had 3 computers on his desk - a PC, a Mac, and an Irix workstation. Some people used MSWord, some used WordPerfect (a couple of different versions, naturally) and some used good old vi+TEX. We had SunOS, Solaris, AIX, and Irix. We had NT, NetWare, and OS/2 file servers. The PCs ran DOS+Win3.1, OS/2, WinNT, or maybe NEXT/Step. We made one baby step towards reducing the variety - I finally pried the last dumb terminal away from a particularly stubborn prof.
Both of these are batshit crazy situations that you never, ever, want to work in.
If the "lets standardize EVERYTHING" people have complete control, then IT support becomes much easier. However, the whole point to having computers is to help people do their job - if the standards interfere with that, users suffer.
In an anarchy situation,support is almost impossible, and you have IT problems that just never get solved. In that case, users suffer.
A middle ground exists.
Calling someone a Nazi everytime they want to impose a little bit of organization or structure or standards doesn't change the fact that standardization makes things easier to support. Conversely, the people deciding on standards have to remember that the whole point of giving people computers is to help them do their job.