[Dclug] Sysadmins: Red Hat Satellite or Git for conf file version control

[james dasinger]

Thanks for all the responses!

@Domenick: are you saying that you use something like RHN Satellite
just for package management, but then do configuration management with
a separate tool? I've had some success using the configuration
management channels in the Satellite... at what point did the RHN
features become inadequate for you? Or to put another way, what
capabilities did a dedicated config management tool give you that RHN
satellite didn't (stuff you actually used)?

I don't have much experience outside my current job so I'm not sure
what qualifies as big or small, but we have less than 200 systems
registered in our Satellite right now. We aren't even fully using the
configuration capabilities of the Satellite as-is. I'm at the point
where I'm trying to decide whether to put in the effort to get
everything running tightly in RHN or whether it would be better for
future growth to go ahead use some other tool. Someone on our dev team
suggested putting the configs in Git, but it was sort of an offhand
suggestion.

I'm definitely interested in learning more about Puppet, Chef,
etc...thanks for the link to the meetup as I'll definitely try to
attend!! Using something like Puppet has been floated around the
office lately (we have one dev that's really interested in DevOps) but
it's still in the exploratory stages.

J.


On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 1:12 PM, Domenick Petrella
<domenick.petrella at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would also recommend a configuration management tool for this, like
> puppet.  There are others, like chef, cfengine, etc, that you may
> consider.  I like using package management to deploy software, like rpm,
> coupled with configuration management.  That gives you a
> version-controlled environment that can be rolled back fairly easily,
> and that is repeatable.
>
> There's an upcoming meetup on configuration management you may find useful:
> http://www.meetup.com/DevOpsDC/events/46606602/
>
> HTH,
>
> -Domenick
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2/14/12 12:44 PM, jecottrell3 at comcast.net wrote:
>> Satellite does many things...it's a very complex and very expensive tool.
>>
>> Git is probably a better match. Or even Subversion if you don't mind a Central Repo.
>>
>> You might also consider Puppet to manage your conf files as well as other things.
>>
>> JIM
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "james dasinger" <jdasinger at googlemail.com>
>> To: dclug at tux.org
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 12:08:21 PM
>> Subject: [Dclug] Sysadmins: Red Hat Satellite or Git for conf file version    control
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Newb admin question for you. If you were in a redhat linux environment
>> and wanted to start getting system .conf files centrally managed, what
>> are the pros-cons between using the Red Hat Network Satellite or Git
>> for version control?
>>
>> Currently I have an existing Satellite subscription and am using it
>> for some things, while our app code is managed through Git. Just
>> looking for experienced opinions.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> J.
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