On 11/04/2009 01:39 PM, Les Mikesell wrote: > How well do any of these tools work when the hosts are widely distributed or > distributed with groups in different locations? yes. > And how do they handle IP > assignment on multiple NICs? Do you need DHCP capability on all segments or do > you need to know all the MAC addresses and the cable connectivity starting out? You only need that for the initial provisioning setup, once the machine is running - neither of the tools need any info on network stacks ( but you are welcome to plumb in whatever you need / want ). DHCP isnt ideal when setup in smaller clusters over a widely spread out, geographically, setup . > Also, do they provide a version-controlled history with a way to easily find > when a change was made and undo it? You dont really need that with platform / state - but its a must for policy and role control - All the major tools in that space encourage use of a VCS backed with layered ACL's if need : puppet/cfengine/chef/bcfg2 - KB -- Karanbir Singh London, UK | http://www.karan.org/ | twitter.com/kbsingh ICQ: 2522219 | Yahoo IM: z00dax | Gtalk: z00dax GnuPG Key : http://www.karan.org/publickey.asc