Re: Quick cfengine poll...

[Mark Rowlands]

On Monday 26 March 2001 18:56, Christopher Browne wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2001 16:51:32 +0200, the world broke into rejoicing as

>
> The world could use disclosure of some reasonably complex cfengine
> configurations; there is interesting stuff in the cfengine
> documentation, but it's probably not enough to satisfy those that
> don't "get it."
>
> The "tutorial" document probably needs to have an extended cfd
> example.
>
> It also might benefit from an example of how to have a 3-tier cfengine
> configuration, with a central server and then a set of "assistants"
> that the bottom tier servers hit on to get their configuration
> updates.

I am implementing cfengine on  around 200 boxes (Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, 
roughly 160:30:10)  The enviroment is essentially 3 tiered,  http / Java 
virtual machines / Oracle databases  and then split down application / 
geographic lines which provides a well defined set of classes which all 
"should"  look pretty similar and generally must be upgraded together.

I have found the documentation to be somewhat opaque, I have had problems 
"getting it" !  I think cfengine really does require some adjustments in the 
way you think about systems management.

Only by implementing little examples and gradually increasing their scope
have I been able to start making some inroads.  That said, it seems highly 
likely that cfengine is a very good fit for my particular environment. 

I think more examples would help and when I get mine working, I will happily 
contribute. Perhaps however cfengine is so emphatically "what you make it" 
that explicit examples may send out misleading messages about the 
functionality available? Whatever, the more examples I can see the better I 
am equipped to make decisions about possible approaches to my particular 
problems.