On 5/10/2010 1:30 PM, Ross Walker wrote:
>
>> Well, yeah - I suppose you could say the design is good for the job
>> security of sysadmins and for requiring support subscriptions from the
>> distribution vendors, but it's something that the computer really should
>> be able to handle by itself just like it does during the initial install.
>
> Computers are dumb, and if we give too much power to the OS vendors
> they'll enslave us.
If it is smart enough to create the initial install it should be smart
enough to adjust the file entries it created to what it would have done
on different hardware. It is creating a lot of work for you to turn
everything into a new install just because that's all it knows how to do.
>> Have you totaled up the hours you've spend on these tasks that would be
>> unnecessary in a better-designed system? And even if that sort-of makes
>> sense for servers that have a basic "type", what about ones that have
>> application developers as users and end up accumulating all kinds of
>> cruft that you don't know about?
>
> After the initial time to research and setup the system the time to
> maintain and extend was minimal, and these were setup a long, long,
> long time ago (circa Windows 2000), use rsync or DFSR to replicate the
> config to other deployment servers in remote offices.
>
> I definitely recommend it.
How many different OS's do you handle this way?
> Just need to setup clear policies with the developers, save your work
> here and it will be recoverable, save your work there and you are SoL.
Getting developers to follow instructions has been described as "herding
cats" - and if you lose developer work or time, everyone is sol, not
just them.
> No need to clone or image either, I can have a server deployed over
> the network in much quicker time then if I imaged it and a whole lot
> easier to maintian long-term then a clone.
That's assuming you've wrapped everything local in an installable
package in a private repository for every OS version you use, which
doesn't sound at all quicker to me. Especially if you start with hosts
that are expected to be one-off types but have to be moved to new
hardware once in a while.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com