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Open Source Tools in Data Centers
An anonymous reader writes "There is a nice presentation on the L.A.S. Linux site entitled "Managing Data Center Functions with Open Source Tools" which was presented at Comdex 2003. It covers everything from IPtables to OpenNMS. As well as covering some less known but nice tools like NeDi, which lets you easily manage Cisco routers and swiches from a web browser."
OpenBSD has PF - a really cool packet/nat/authentication/bandwidth limiter/port forwarding system that is really, really, cool
You can do clever things, like allow a certain amount of bandwith for sombody, but if they log in, the bandwith limit disappears.
Or parse the spam blackout litsts and block all incoming packets from them (spam trype networks have more that their fair share of crackers)
All withouht crypic config files.
I *REALLY* hope, for Linux's sake, that after FreeBSD ports PF (to replace their IPF), a Linux port will be forthcoming.
IPTables is just fine for simple firewalls, but PF has a much more sane syntax, and it can handle really complex networks without a headache.
PF is sooo good - it's worth learing a bit of OpenBSD to get it. If you're good at Linux - it will take to half a day to learn all you need to get PF on OpenBSD working, and that includes installing OpenBSD.
It's not hard at all - I came from a Windows background and dident even know VI and it only took me three days to learn enough about OpenBSD to get it working.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
You might want to look at FreeVSD ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/freevsd/). It used to be a commerical package and many ISPs have used it over the years. It hasn't been updated in a few months though since the company went under in Jan. 2003.
It has all your virtual server stuff and even has a web interface to manage everything as well, like the creation of new virtual servers, etc.
I don't see why the Open Source community couldn't pick up on it and update it for the last releases of Linux distributions. Everyone keeps saying that they would pay to help develop an Open Source virtual server program, well here is your chance to do so with a working program.
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