Blogs

Resources for choosing a configuration management tool: “Getting Started with Configuration Management” Cory Lueninghoener. ;login:, Apr 2011. “Configuration management tools take time to set up and maintain, but using one is well worth the effort. In this article I will present technical and social problems, solutions and advice related to getting started with a configuration management tool.” C.L. “Configuration Management Summit” Aleksey Tsalolikhin. ;login:, Oct 2010. Conference report summary from the First Configuration Management Summit, with a concise overview of Bcfg2, CFEngine, Chef and Puppet, as well as the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. ...

Mount Laurel, NJ, 22 September 2010 - LOPSA, the League of Professional System Administrators, a professional sys admin organization, unveils a mentorship program. In fulfillment of LOPSA’s mission to support the practice of system administration, LOPSA’s sys admin members volunteer as mentors and as program coordinators. Anyone can join the program as a protege; membership in LOPSA in not required. This is truly a community service. How does the LOPSA Mentor Program work? ...

A Report from Configuration Management Summit 2010 “Introduction to Automating System Administration with Cfengine 3” (Brief version) (Longer version) (Full version) UUASC-LA panel on Cfengine, Chef and Puppet on 1 Oct 2009 CFengine 2 presentation book. Video: part 1 part 2 UUASC-LA presentation on Cfengine 3 on 2 Sep 2010 Video: part 1 part 2 part 3

Comments are welcome - please email me: aleksey@verticalsysadmin.com

After talking with John Willis of Chef/OpsCode at Ohio Linux Fest (I taught an intro class on Cfengine 3), I finally started to get Infrastructure As code. Am immensely excited to try it out. My first project is to ephemerize the Web/App server tier in a staging environment - instead of rolling out a new version of the application, I will roll out a new VM, completely configured by Cfengine, and the new application, also installed by Cfengine. ...

Nutshell Comparison of PCI, PCI-X and PCI Express Unix Flight Recorder

The Practice of System and Network Administration

In Cfengine, creator Mark Burgess pioneered the idea of using a configuration description language to describe desired state on heterogeneous Unix and Unix-like systems. This language included “classes” or built-in if/then tests to control when and where the configuration should apply. In Cfengine 2, Mark introduced ideas of convergence to a desired state and self-healing (computer immunology). Puppet was created by a power Cfengine 2 user Luke Kanies out of his dissatisfaction with Cfengine 2 and Mark’s management of the project. Next generation tool after Cfengine 2, Puppet is graph-based and model-driven and has a very simple DSL language (designed to be simple, safe and human readable) and now a Ruby DSL (for additional power and flexibility). Puppet has a large and active community. ...