Hi CentOS Devel,
We are also interested in being part of a SIG centered around 'Server Management.' Please let us know the next steps. We'd like to get started right away and we are willing to participate in the process of helping to set up shop. Let us know how we can serve.
If you had to map this to a technology, what might that be ?
Integration through a web-based administration tool. How's that for a nebulous answer :-) Here's a scenario that will help explain what we do.
For privacy and compliance reasons, a not-for-profit needs to run a mail server in their own data center. Using a VM or bare metal, they fire up CentOS and install:
- Postfix - Cyrus IMAP - SpamAssassin - ClamAV (from EPEL) - OpenSSL for user certificates
They pull it all together with OpenLDAP for user and group management. Now all that needs to be done is configuring all those open source packages into a cohesive mail solution: /etc/postfix/main.cf, /etc/clamd.conf, /etc/imapd.conf, etc. When that's done, they breakout the OpenSSL documentation to figure out all the security certificate jargon -- Certificate Authority, here we come.
Many people on this list (including yours truly) love to get into these details, but many others prefer to get the ball rolling and dig in only when required. ClearOS pulls everything together with a web-based interface for configuration -- a picture is worth a thousand words (screenshot):
http://www.clearcenter.com/images/clearos%20professional%20gateway%20id.png
All of this runs on a "CentOS variant" today and most of it is open source ( http://code.clearfoundation.com/). Yes, there are some paid apps available to pay the bills but the apps noted above, for example, are free and free.
That's a basic overview of what we do. How does this help the CentOS / RHEL community and how does ClearOS fit in with the variants proposal? Some thoughts from a technical perspective:
- RPM package maintenance (EPEL packaging?) - QA and test scripts - Documenting best practices - Growing the CentOS / RHEL ecosystem
Cheers, Peter Baldwin ClearFoundation