Are there any BMR (bare metal restore) style apps for Linux

Todd Zullinger tmz at pobox.com
Tue Jun 16 20:08:59 UTC 2009


Gabriel - IP Guys wrote:
> I'm currently planning to see how I would use Puppet to manage my
> Linux servers, I assume from your comment, that it's possible? What
> configuration info can  you keep in puppet?

Puppet can manage individual files, packages, services, users, groups,
and a lot more.  The beauty of it is that you use a simple language to
define what your system(s) should look like and puppet then ensures
that they match it.

For example, you could have puppet manage your sudoers file.  You
would edit the file in one place, on the puppetmaster (aka your puppet
server).  When you make a change to that file, any of your puppet
managed systems will have the updated sudoers file installed the next
time they check in with the puppetmaster (by default this is every 30
minutes).

Even better, you can tell puppet that whenever a file is modified that
a service must be reloaded or restarted.  So if you change httpd.conf,
puppet will deploy it to your systems and then reload httpd.

To get a better overview, you might want to spend a few minutes poking
around the Puppet wiki at http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/ .

You can combine puppet with a provisioning tool like cobbler¹ and have
a base system up and fully configured in just a few minutes.  Once you
have defined your systems configuration, you can worry less about
individual boxes because it's so easy to blow one away and re-create
it from scratch.  Your puppet configuration can be kept in a version
control system like git which you can easily use to keep backups of
the configuration files you care about (which are generally only a
small fraction of the files on a given system).

¹ https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/

-- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Years ago fairy tales all began with "Once upon a time...", now we
know they all begin with, "If I am elected..."
    -- Carolyn Warner

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