@arlieth, who got his shiny job at Amazon a year and a half ago through a joint LOPSA-LA/CFEngine-LA meetup at Amazon Irvine, is doing very well: “I’m in the process of performing a transition to Systems Engineer I. I can honestly say without a doubt that you’ve helped me make the biggest leap in my career. Thanks for everything, I really mean it.” You are welcome! Very well done, Thomas and continue! ...
In March 2014 post, agent42 at Enigmabox discovers CFEngine is 10 times faster, uses less memory and has simpler policy for JSON-driven configuration than other software; and is delighted by awesome support. agent42’s post reminded me what sealed the deal for me when I was evaluating which configuration management tool to use. I started by surveying the configuration management field. I picked CFEngine to examine closer because: a) CFEngine had been around the longest, since 1993, so I expected it would be mature, and ...
Over the years, I’ve had more than one student come up to me on break or after course to tell me they wish they came earlier as it would have saved them time and trouble. I’d like to share with you some real-life student comments (emphasis mine): Last week I attended VSA’s CFEngine Policy Writing Workshop taught by Brian Bennett. I wanted to take a quick second to thank Aleksey for putting this on and Brian for teaching. It was very helpful. I only wish I had taken it when I first started working with CFEngine. ...
A sysadmin I’m mentoring through the LOPSA Mentorship program has learned a lot on the job but is not sure what he is missing. He asked for help identifying what he knows, and where he should learn more. I suggested he look at LPI’s page outlining what the LPIC-1 certification covers and follow this program: 1. Print the page 2. Check off the items that you are certain you know how to do / how to use ...
Configuration Management tools have become a critical part of our infrastructure. We expect and depend on these tools being robust. For the tool makers I offer my notes on Dr. Holzmann’s talk on how NASA/JPL builds robust software. The first part introduces and describes the challenge, the second part contains the solutions.
Use Syntax Highlighters Highlighting syntax is a big time server. Color highlighting lets you save time and trouble by catching errors early in the development process. Use a syntax plug-in for your editor! Revision control system hooks. Code review. You can set up a precommit hook to validate syntax before accepting code into your VCS repository; or you can use Jenkins to syntax-check new commits and move them to another branch if they validate. ...
CFEngine is designed to be comprehensive and to let you model nearly any aspect of the system’s configuration. There are 478 unique promise attributes in CFEngine 3.4.0 to enable you to do so. Here is a detailed listing of all the promise attributes available in CFEngine 3.4.0, and the synopsis for each. For more detail, please consult the syntax guide or the reference manual. Fortunately CFEngine is also designed to address challenges of Knowledge Management and allows you to summarize and abstract the underlying low-level detail.
Diego Zamboni, author of “Learning CFEngine 3”, commented on A not-so-brief aside on reigning in chaos. His comment includes the clearest explanation of idempotence vs convergence I’ve ever seen: About idempotence vs convergence: as you rightly point out, they are not the same, and there are very important differences. Idempotence is an operation that leaves the system unmodified if it’s already in the desired state, whereas convergence is the property of a system of not making unnecessary changes (nor operations). The end result may be the same, but CFEngine emphasizes convergence over idempotence, and has A LOT of built-in logic to automatically avoid performing unnecessary operations. ...
At a certain point in your career, you may start sharing your work with others in your profession. You may be asked to present a poster at a conference summarizing your work. There is a wonderful write-up by Colin Purrington, graphic designer, on creating academic posters - it is full of useful tips and is funny and passionate.
Purpose: There is a lot to know about CFEngine, which can make it hard for people new to the subject. The purpose of this guide is to lay out the resources available to CFEngine students and to orient them to this body of knowledge to speed their journey into practical system automation with CFEngine 3. The guide is based largely on the materials of cfengine.com with full gratitude to Mark Burgess for continuously raising the bar in the field of system administration. ...