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?"

Comments

SMS? Login script?

[Bazzargh]

SMS's features are, according to MS:
- 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 .dat file to the correct directory.

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= /library/en-us/script56/html/wsconwshwmi.asp ) describes this.

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.

Re:SMS? Login script?

[Kevster]

Mainly this is used for os patches and virus scanner updates.

Bah. I worked in a large WAN environment with ~200 servers and ~7,000 desktops (a mix of Windows 95 and NT) and believe me, OS patches and virus scanner updates were the least of it. The provincial government, with numerous Departments and Branches within those departments, has a huge number of diverse applications, both off-the-shelf and custom-written. They use MS SMS, and for good reason!

One of the main reasons, as I see it, for using SMS is distributing applications to Windows NT (or newer) users. Install applications at logon, you say? Do you know that this requires Administrator privs for most apps and updates? Do you also know that the logon script executes with the privs of the user who is logging on? Do you really want all of your users to have administrative access to their PCs? I thought not.

One of the key benefits is SMS can install apps in the background using a service running with elevated privs on Windows NT. No user interaction is required. This gets around that major issue.

Re:I wish!!

[AndyDeck]

Your info is out-of-date. The latest Zenworks for Servers, version 3.0, has full policy and distribution services support on Linux - you can distribute and install RPMs, for instance. Read the latest docs - Novell posts them for download at http://www.novell.com/documentation/lg/zfsi/index. html.
The supported platforms are Solaris 8 and Linux kernel 2.4.x (tested on RedHat 7.1/7.2, but others should work).

Policy and Distribution services provides: (from the docs
* Control the versions of software installed on servers throughout the network
* Define and enforce a standard configuration on any given set of servers
* Control the behavior of servers in given situations, such as downing a server, backing up volumes, managing thresholds exceeded, and so on

It is still true, as far as I can see, that the Zen for Servers Management & Monitoring services, along with Inventory & Remote Control, do not extend natively to the Solaris or Linux platforms. Maybe there will be full support in the next version. In the meanwhile, SNMP management should still be available from a ZfS management console, and Remote Control can be handled through Telnet/SSH, VNC, etc.

Utilities like Snapshot exist for Linux in many forms already - think Tripwire & its relatives.