[Infrastructures] fai vs. ZENworks vs. m23

[Adrian von Bidder]

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Yo all!

We're (finally) ending our historically grown each-machine-is-unique=20
approach to maintaining our 80 Linux PCs and looking at some management=20
tools.  We're evaluating m23, zenworks and fai - any users of these tools=20
here?

fai and m23 would imply using Debian (or derivative), while ZENworks would=
=20
imply SuSE (we're not looking at RH)- we are confident that both are=20
absolutely viable choices, and since I'm more a Debian guy, while my=20
collegue has more SuSE experience we thought that we'll decide on the=20
software distribution tool first and base our distribution choice on that.

As mentioned, there are ca. 80 clients.  Some of them are on ADSL (700k,=20
soon 2Mbps), some of them on VDSL (12Mbps) so upgrade by re-installing=20
complete images is probably not a good idea.  Also, many of these clients=20
are only powered on when people want to work, so the update process needs=20
to cope with that:
 * needs to happen in the background
 * needs to cope with being aborted a few times during download
 * needs to be client-driven, as we don't know and don't want to know when=
=20
each client will be powered on.  Wake on LAN might be possible except for=20
the DSL clients.

Otherwise, the environment is relatively simple.  Uniform x86 Linux=20
environment, even more or less uniform hardware (wrt net, graphics=20
chipsets).  The only problem will be the local printers, where we'll need=20
to properly handle all the configuration differencies. LDAP as auth=20
service, $HOME on NFS, KDE partly locked down with KIOSK.

Comments?

cheers
=2D- vbi

=2D-=20
Today is Setting Orange, the 45th day of Chaos in the YOLD 3172

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