SUMMARY : managing lot of Solaris hosts

First thanks everyone for your quick and interesting reply.

The consensus was to use cfgengine :

http://www.cfengine.org

Also from John Riddoch :

"As for patches, I wouldn't worry too much about ensuring single user mode
for clients; I've managed OK in the past and used a perl script to handle
the updates (you can get it from
http://riddoch.org/unix/perl/patchupdate.php3 if you want to look).  The
script isn't overly secure, but it worked.  There's a link to another script
which you can try if you want"

Also from David A Stewart :


"We have several hundred suns.

I have a master workstation for each different kernel architecture. I 
load patches, make changes on the master workstation and then use 
rsysc to update the other workstations overnight.

The rsync files are built automatically from a database (flat ascii file).

This has worked well for years (previously used rdist instead of rsyc).

Your "client" workstations need a ".rhosts" file with an entry for the 
master workstation (we use a cron job to put in place and then remove it).

You need to be careful in designing the rsync scripts because some 
files are workstation specific."


My original question :

Hi,
>
>I'm looking for an efficiant way to manage ( OS version & patches aspect 
>) lot of Solaris servers and clients
>
>Our engineers have Blade100 or other Solaris machine ( something like 
>few ~200 ) on their desks which suppose to be similar in their 
>configuration and also we have Solaris servers for the computing itself.
>
>Is there a good way for keeping the machine up to date with patches 
>except install on each machine the patches every time seperatly ( going 
>to single user , install , reboot  ) ?
>
>I thought of doing them ( the clients - Blade100 , etc ) diskless 
>clients but every one of them needs a seperate directory on the server 
>so i will need huge disks for all the clients and also it will cause lot 
>of network traffic
>
>Any interesting idea ?
>
>
>Thanks a lot.


-- 
Zeev Fisher - Unix System Administrator
Galileo Technology Ltd - A Marvell Company
Moshav Manof, D.N. Misgav 20184, ISRAEL
Email    -  zeevf@galileo.co.il
Tel      -  + 972 4 8225046 ext. 2402
Cell     -  + 972 54 995402
Fax      -  + 972 4 8326420
WWW Page:     http://www.marvell.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged
information. The information is intended only for the use of the individual
or entity named above. If the reader of this message is not the
intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution
or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited.
If you have received this communication in error, please notify us
immediately by telephone, or by e-mail and delete the message from your
computer.
_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers