[CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

Sat Feb 15 10:20:09 UTC 2020
Natxo Asenjo <natxo.asenjo at gmail.com>

hi,


On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 8:55 AM Nicolas Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> ....
> On servers though, one of the first post-installation steps I performed
> was to
> get rid of Network-Manager and all its components. The servers I'm working
> on
> are relatively small-scale and have from one to four network interfaces.
> Each
> interface has a corresponding configuration in
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts,
> and that's it. From there, I rarely - if ever - touch it. In all my
> setups,
> NetworkManager is merely a useless layer of abstraction, and I like
> sticking to
> the KISS principle and shave off useless layers.
>

Interesting philosophical discussion but using centos means you need to go
with whatever red hat decides, so if they say so, then you have few options.

I must admit I have long refused to use networkmanager, but since centos 7
it has been rock solid. And as we use config tools (salt right now, but it
is the same with the rest of the competition) I do not really care what
they use to abstract the network configuration as long as it works. And
work it does, so everybody is happy.

Another huge selling point is that it is what cockpit uses to configure the
network interfaces, and cockpit is really nice for less advanced users. So
our more junior people can get their feet wet using cockpit, and we can
automate everything using configuration management, and both tools use the
same api so nobody gets left behind.

Tab completion makes it easy to use, too ;-)

In the end, my take is: whoever comes after me needs to understand whatever
we were doing, so let's just sitck with what the vendor provides (regarding
the operating system) and use best of breed tooling to manage it (which may
or may not be what the OS vendor recommends, but can fit better the
business's requirements).

--
regards from the sunny Netherlands,
natxo