mln (was: Re: Bootstrapping)

[Tim Nelson]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, John Sechrest wrote:

>
>
> Nate Campi <nate@campin.net> writes:
>
>  % >  A) Why would this not work as a component of the CFengine work that
>  % >     is already going on?
>
>  % Well I suppose I mean separate mailing list, so as not to bother this
>  % list.
>
>  At some level yes, because there are many detailed little
>  cfengine configuration issues that need to be understood.
>
>  And much of that will be noise to the list.
>
>  On the other hand, getting real globally abstracted cfengine
>  configurations for each of the roles is a good thing to talk about on
>  this list.

        Hmm.  I think at least one separate list is a good idea -- that
gives people the choice as to whether they want to be in it or not.

>  I am aiming at cfengine configurations for roles like:
>
>
> MLN Roles
> ---------
> web
> mail-frontend
> mail-backend
> mysql
> lustre-client
> lustre-mds
> lustre-ost
> boinc
> seti
> boinc-backend
> dns
> radius
> dhcp
> ldap
> shell
> condor
> monitor
> syslog
> smb
> meta-config
> policyhost
> disk-nfs
> gw

        Backup?  PostgreSQL?

> So each of these will take work and talking and lots of details.
> And I am not sure how much this list wants to watch that process.

        So where do we sign up for this other list?

>  % >  C) Do you care that there already is an ongoing project working
>  % >     on the same issue? (We got our sourceforge project approved recently)
>
>  % Cool. I thought hard about going exactly the way you're going, with
>  % UML's, right in line with the "utility computing" buzzword being slung
>  % around a lot in the press and vendor marketing materials.
>
>  % I decided against it, since we can make configuration of real hosts
>  % almost as easy, and get all their performance. I have a surprising
>  % number of hosts lacking on CPU, DISK and memory resources, mostly mail
>  % servers. I need every last ounce of capacity out of a lot of my hosts.
>  % There are very expensive and modern hardware platforms, it's just that
>  % we have large clusters of mail and web servers that work very, very
>  % hard.
>
>  The nice thing about doing UML is that once you have the configurations,
>  the systems will not care if they are UML instances or real machines.
>
>  And so by doing UML, I get the other for free.

        Great!  This answers my other questions.

>  And I get the ability to do testing rapidly.
>
>  In any case, we are on a roll and trying to make regular progress.

        :).  I can relate to that.      

--
Tim Nelson
Systems Administrator
Sunet Internet
Tel: +61 3 5241 1155
Fax: +61 3 5241 6187
Web: http://www.sunet.com.au/
Email: sysadmin@sunet.com.au