[Infrastructures] How do you manage 1000+ systems

[Ivan Popov]

On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 07:55:43PM -0700, Mark Ferlatte wrote:
> Rodrick Brown said on Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 10:37:01PM -0400:
> > How does anyone here find using rcs for config file change documentation ? 
> 
> Well, we use CVS, not RCS, but I can't imagine living without it.

Hello,

not questioning the usefulness of rcs/cvs/svn in general,
just to point out an important exception -

when we have begun to apply the congruent model to computer management,
in accordance with http://www.infrastructures.org/papers/turing/turing.html,

i.e. changes made in a strict order and added strictly at the end,

we noticed that we do not need a version control system other than
the directory tree containing the scripts and data for the changes.

Going explicitely through versions is en essential part of a congruent system.

As the changes are strictly ordered and one-way-interdependent, any traditional
version control system is both inadeqate (creates a possibility to easily
break things) and overkill - most of its functionality is not needed.

With other words, as soon as you maintain and use the sequence of _changes_
explicitely, compared to maintaining the (changing) files,
you do not need a versioning system to manage the history.

Either you add new stuff at the end of a text file, where you clearly comment
each addition, or you just add new "action" files to the setup, as we do.

It took virtually no time to write simple scripts for synchronization between
several configuration developers, checkout/commit/backout/release,
so even for that purpose cvs is unnecessary.
(cvs, to become reliable for congruency, would have to be wrapped into
a lot more elaborated scripts)

Not congruency-bound files are of course subject to version control systems.

My 2c
--
Ivan