[Infrastructures] Re: Host installs?

[Jim Rowan]

On Thursday, February 6, 2003, at 09:26 PM, stephen white wrote:
...
> From my experience, I had no difficulty whatsoever with managing separate 
> classes of machines derived from the same base installation.

I agree it's not difficult -- but I don't agree that it's efficient!

> The server overlay would consist of installing NFS, NTP, HTTP and other 
> server applications, all defaulting to disabled.

For instance (as a poor example, I know), next week when it comes time to 
sync the time on all your boxes, you're going to have to install NTP on the 
rest of them.  The problem with this "pre-planning" of the functions that 
a box should perform is that you have to be pretty good at it, and your 
environment pretty static, or you do significantly more work in the long 
run.
...
> Regarding your experience, the conclusion I would have drawn would have 
> been to reach into that single different machine, rip out the different 
> video card and replace it with something the same as the rest of them.

Do you find it ironic that you're willing to force a single hardware image 
but go out of your way not to in the software arena?

> The most important thing is to refrain from giving the users something 
> they haven't asked for, or they'll use it and it'll become a management 
> pain in the arse. This is why I don't install ksh, zsh and alternative 
> versions of the same thing - there's always some obscure feature lurking 
> in one of them that a user will become reliant on, and you'll have to 
> support it in perpetuity.

Ugh.  Apparently you're not joking.  This is not a model that promotes 
organizational efficiency, flexibility, capability, ... harmony, teamwork,
  ...


Jim Rowan
DCSI
jmr@computing.com