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Linux Server Management Options

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
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Good day Community -

With Linux being more prevalant in environments, including Veeam supporting Linux within its deployment components, it is a bit cumbersome to manage all these devices individually. So my question for the Community today is → what centralized management tool(s) do you use to manage your Linux server footprint?..to update, push scripts, monitor, etc? I’m needing to update & even push a script (change) out to our Linux servers and don’t want to touch all of them individually. Any info you can provide is greatly appreciated.

I did a little bit of searching before posting and saw a tool called Landscape which looks promising, but don’t know anything about it & open to hear anyone’s experience with it...or again..any tool. 

Thanks in advance!

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Best answer by Geoff Burke 1 June 2023, 17:30

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Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00

21 comments

Geoff Burke
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Ansible gets my vote!

VMCA2022, VMCE2023, CKA, CKAD, KCNA, LFCS, PCA,TARS
Geoff Burke
Userlevel 7
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monitoring, lots of choices, zabbix being one, but recently I have taken to node_exporter for prometheus, which in turn can be hooked into grafana as well all know from @jorge.delacruz :)

VMCA2022, VMCE2023, CKA, CKAD, KCNA, LFCS, PCA,TARS
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

I have also seen Ansible & Puppet get votes in some searches, but know zilch on either. Looking on resolving that lack of knowledge, but time is against me (remember your earlier post? 😂)

Thanks Geoff.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Geoff Burke
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I agree about the time. However, if there was anything I would personally make an exception for it is Ansible. Just my opinion but things it can do!!! :)

VMCA2022, VMCE2023, CKA, CKAD, KCNA, LFCS, PCA,TARS
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
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I’ve had an ‘Ansible Fundamentals’ Pluralsight course tab open in my Brave browser for a better part of a month and half now. So, I’m close to starting it..just not quite there yet 😂 Probably time to start...

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
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Yeah Ansible is pretty good at this.  Not sure of others but will find out what we use here since we have more Linux boxes now.

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2022 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 3* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech
Link State
Userlevel 7
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Ansible gets my vote!

agree m8, Ansible is the best for me!

Veeam: VMCA | VMCE | VMXP | Veeam Legend - Microsoft: MCITP | MCP | MCSA | 2008 R2 | 2012R2 | 2016 | MCSE Core Infrastructure | MCSE Cloud Platform - Azure: AZ900 | AZ104 - VMWare: VCP-DCV Vsphere 7.x - Cisco: CCNA (Expired)
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
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Thanks! Looking like I need to dive into Ansible a bit 😊

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Iams3le
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

I have also seen Ansible & Puppet get votes in some searches, but know zilch on either. Looking on resolving that lack of knowledge, but time is against me (remember your earlier post? 😂)

Thanks Geoff.

Ansible is your best bet! Easy to learn and can also run on windows. I would recommend running it on Linux. At one time, we were exploring various orchestration tools. I wouldn’t recommend Chef! Seems you prefer Puppet, why? With Ansible, you connect via SSH and WinRM and can leverage Kerberos in windows env! 

Microsoft MVP | Veeam Legend 5* | VMware vExpert 4* | Cisco Champion 3*
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
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Thanks for the added Ansible suggestion @Iams3le . I wasn’t commenting on “preferring” Puppet. I was just saying it’s an option, along with Ansible and Landscape is all. I’ll for sure take a look at Ansible & Chef. Really appreciate the input bud.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Geoff Burke
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I have also seen Ansible & Puppet get votes in some searches, but know zilch on either. Looking on resolving that lack of knowledge, but time is against me (remember your earlier post? 😂)

Thanks Geoff.

Ansible is your best bet! Easy to learn and can also run on windows. I would recommend running it on Linux. At one time, we were exploring various orchestration tools. I wouldn’t recommend Chef! Seems you prefer Puppet, why? With Ansible, you connect via SSH and WinRM and can leverage Kerberos in windows env! 

 At kodekloud engineer they have scenarios with both chef and puppet but I do not find them as straightforward as Ansible. Puppet needs an agent as well. Here is a good comparison:

https://www.simplilearn.com/ansible-vs-puppet-the-key-differences-to-know-article

VMCA2022, VMCE2023, CKA, CKAD, KCNA, LFCS, PCA,TARS
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
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Thanks for sharing the article Geoff 👍🏼

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
MicoolPaul
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Badge +20

When attempting to run the same task across multiple solutions I use Multi-Tabbed PuTTY. Handy for simple routine tasks such as running apt-get updates & upgrades across the cluster etc.

I’m seeing a lot of Ansible currently for orchestration, due to flexibility between different builds, have seen a few places whereby they’ve had to split between Ubuntu and RHEL for example. Ubuntu Landscape is nice.

 

I used to use Webmin for a nice Web GUI way of managing my servers, haven’t touched the project for about 4-5 years now so I can’t speak if it’s still good, but certainly nice to allow management without expertise in these other systems.

Michael Paul - #VeeamLegend | #VeeamVanguard | Veeam Certified Architect | VMware vExpert | https://micoolpaul.com | Twitter: @MicoolPaul | Mastodon: @micoolpaul@masto.nu | Bluesky: @micoolpaul.bsky.social
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
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Thanks @MicoolPaul . I’m watching some Ansible instruction on Pluralsight (instructed by Redhat) now. Seems to be a cmdline tool, though so far seems kinda nice. I’d like more of a UI-based tool, so may look at Landscapre, & even may search out your old tool Webmin. Appreciate all the suggestions.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
vmJoe
Userlevel 7
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@coolsport00 can you call your self a Linux admin if you use a GUI tool to manage Linux? 😜🤔

Joe Gremillion, VMCA, TOGAF, VeeaMVP
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

bwahaha 😂....well, to this point I never have called myself one, but have been "training" in Linux a LOT this year 😊 Though my boss knows Linux pretty well too, I think he wants to go with more of a UI based solution. But, it'll mostly be up to me which direction we go since I'll be the one doing most all the CM work 😏

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
BertrandFR
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Ansible, rundeck for automation.

Centreon, prometheus for basic monitoring. I will suggest netdata agent for linux.

Elastic stack for observability if you want to collect metrics, logs, security data etc

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Thanks for sharing @BertrandFR I've been learning Ansible since Geoff suggested it. Think I'll end up going with a Web UI tool when it's all said and done though. Thanks all for the assist! 

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Geoff Burke
Userlevel 7
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By the way if you have folks on your team who don’t want to use the CLI you can check out ansible tower and AWX as well. https://4sysops.com/archives/ansible-tower-vs-ansible-awx-for-automation/

 

I have played with AWX in kubernetes for fun a little bit but did have not gone much further than exposing it so I can reach via the webgui. 

VMCA2022, VMCE2023, CKA, CKAD, KCNA, LFCS, PCA,TARS
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
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Appreciate the added info Geoff!

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
R
Userlevel 3
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Of course Ansible is the first ideal choice, but using Terraform with “null_resource” something I would do 😀

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