[lug] CM for a small sysadmin.

[Dan Ferris]

Ansible.  It's by far the easiest of the bunch.

On 10/28/2015 01:06 PM, David L. Anselmi wrote:
> What's a good CM system (ala chef, puppet, etc) for a single server
> managed by two or three admins?
> 
> Take for example, the cluedenver.org server that I happen to manage. 
> It's one server that provides a mailing list and web site.  I don't know
> what all is on it (apps or config) but I can figure it out well enough.
> 
> Now suppose that I want to migrate it to a cheaper provider, and/or
> upgrade it to something more modern.  And I'm going to get someone else
> to help, whose responsibilities will overlap mine but not entirely (so
> he might be handling all the drupal setup and I may handle all the mail
> list setup and we both handle everything else).
> 
> So as part of this migration I want to capture all the changes we make
> in a way that lets us know what's been done--so it's easier to
> communicate changes and to reproduce them if we want to move a service
> to a different host or rebuild the thing entirely.
> 
> I think the rebuild process should be:
> - push a button to create a server in the cloud somewhere
> - run the CM app to configure it correctly
> - achieve world domination
> 
> OK, so before running the CM app maybe it needs to be installed, and the
> config adjusted to account for new host names or network addresses.
> 
> Things I do by hand that should be handled by the CM app:
> - install software
> - configure complex software like apache, tomcat (with custom apps), etc
> - add yum repositories and install software from them
> - create user accounts
> - configure backups for data that can't be reproduced (like the mail
> list archives or user files)
> 
> I don't expect this to need to scale to google size, but maybe there
> will be 3 or 4 servers and 4 or 5 admins one day.
> 
> I'm sure this sucks as a requirements document but maybe it's close.  Or
> you can help me explain what I mean.
> 
> Thanks!
> Dave
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