[Infrastructures] fai vs. ZENworks vs. m23

[Ryan Nowakowski]

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On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 08:52:04AM +0100, Adrian von Bidder wrote:
> Yo all!
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> We're (finally) ending our historically grown each-machine-is-unique=20
> approach to maintaining our 80 Linux PCs and looking at some management=
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> tools.  We're evaluating m23, zenworks and fai - any users of these tools=
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> here?
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> fai and m23 would imply using Debian (or derivative), while ZENworks woul=
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> 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.
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> As mentioned, there are ca. 80 clients.  Some of them are on ADSL (700k,=
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> 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=
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> are only powered on when people want to work, so the update process needs=
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> 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 whe=
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> each client will be powered on.  Wake on LAN might be possible except for=
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> the DSL clients.
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> 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=
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> to properly handle all the configuration differencies. LDAP as auth=20
> service, $HOME on NFS, KDE partly locked down with KIOSK.
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> Comments?
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> cheers
> -- vbi

I'm using FAI and isconf 2.X to manage about 20 Debian Sarge machines
for a manufacturing test environment.  It has worked well for us.  For
the next infrastructure I will definitely be using isconf 4.X.  I just
have too much knowledge stored in makefiles right now to switch.

- Ryan

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