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Systems Management Server Equivalent for Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the preventing-a-major-network-overhaul dept.

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?"

1 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. SMS? Login script? by Bazzargh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.