starting Fedora Server SIG

[Dennis Gilmore]

On Tuesday 11 November 2008 12:50:41 pm Dan Horák wrote:
> There were many discussions in the past few days and weeks about the
> orientation Fedora currently has. It is a fact that currently
> Fedora is primarily desktop oriented.
>
> We agree that Desktop is important part of the system, it is highly
> visible to the public and large number of Fedora users. But we also see
> a large number of Fedora and CentOS users and RHEL customers with very
> specific needs and demands. We can not omit the server fundamentals that
> later create a successful enterprise product and in our opinion a formal
> entity must exist to coordinate these efforts.
>
> That's why we started work on establishing the Fedora Server SIG. The
> draft is available at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DanHorak/ServerSIG
> Any constructive ideas are welcome  :-)

I fully agree that there should be a server SIG. When I was at FISL this year 
I was amazed that parts of the Brazilian Govt. run fedora on all of there 
machines, from server to desktop. There is no reason that they couldn't help 
with the server SIG, along with RHEL customers, and anyone else who has an 
intrested in driving forward the direction that Fedora and derivatives move in 
regards to running on servers. I've also run and continue to run fedora 
servers.

If there was a server spin i would think it would be just enough to have yum 
working  there are so many different server purposes.  I think a better thing 
would be to have kickstart files with different pre-configured systems.  mail 
server, web server, db server etc.  along with kickstarts for setting up 
infrastructure, puppet server, dhcp, dns, etc.  perhaps enhancing system-
config-kickstart with the predefined roles to allow customisation or a web 
version.

Along with kickstarts  there needs to be whitepapers documenting best 
practices.  setting up things like func, koan, cobbler.   showing how the 
whole infrastructure can be managed using best practices and open source 
tools.  This is where the server SIG can really win.  Fedora Infrastructure is 
a great place to look for a open forward thinking, functional infrastructure 
team

There is also the whole kit and kaboodle of monitoring and alerting, cacti, 
nagios, zabbix.  then the security monitoring, audit, snort, prelude and 
freinds.  There is a huge scope to work with.   

Thanks for bringing this forward.

Dennis