Administration Software

[Robert Anderson]

Are there any Software programs to help centrally administer Unix machines. We have 2 N-class and 3 L-class boxes. It is starting to become quite cumbersome to manage all the boxes. Whenever CRON adjustments are to be made, I have to telnet from session to session and make the changes. This leaves a lot of room for something to be missed. If any of you have suggestions, please provide some sort of link where I can get more information on it. Your response is greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Robert M. Anderson

[eran maor · Accepted solution]

Hi Robert

i know about 2 product that can make your life much easier but be aware - the are not chip !

1. VPO - openview product that you need to install on UNIX platform , not just system admin but much more then you ask .
link : http://www.openview.hp.com/products/operations/index.asp

2. VPW - the same as VPO but can run on window2000 - much chiper then VPO .

you can also write script and run them at remote shell but this is not a product.

also you have the SAM - system admin manager
that can help you for admin a local system .

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
There are also some frameworks from tivoli:
http://www.tivoli.com/products/solutions/operations/
and CA unicenter:
http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Collateral.asp?ID=877&PID=315

But I would stick to HP if thats all you have...


All the best

Victor

[Carsten Krege]

A software that tries to address centralized management is HPUX ServiceControl. It might be a bit oversized for your needs, but check out the marketing page and the manual.

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/management/index.html


http://docs.hp.com/hpux/pdf/B8339-90027.pdf

Carsten

[linuxfan]

Hi Robert,

Another free utility is webmin
http://www.webmin.com

It supports lot of standard modules
http://www.webmin.com/webmin/standard.html
and there are tons of third-party-modules too
http://webmin.thirdpartymodules.com. Also
it is supported for a different OSes
http://www.webmin.com/webmin/support.html


-HTH
Ramesh

[Edward Alfert_2]

I agree that webmin is great... and i use it.. and would recommend it...

BUT

i don't think it will do what he wants. You still have to install webmin on each server and you have to make the changes on each server individually. It's not centralized.

BUT

It does make admin easier and quicker if you aren't sure of which command or config file to modify, and you can remote admin from anywhere that you can connect via http protocol.

[Jay Newman]

It really depends on the scope of how many different files and applications you need to touch on each server. Here's my suggestion for a no-cost solution.
If it is the same set of files (syslog, crontabs, etc.) you might want to consider using NFS mounts. Export the same directories on each server, and mount them on one host that acts as your master.
I.E., /syslogABC may be /var/adm/syslog on host ABC
That way you're just logging into one host, and can view or copy files as if everything was local to that system.
Caution: watch what rights you give remote users to these exported directories.

[linuxfan]

Hi Robert,

Another tool you can use is rdist,
make changes to one machine and distribute it to other machines

The source code for rdist can be obtained from
http://www.magnicomp.com/rdist
or from the HP's porting center
http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Networking/Admin/rdist-6.1.5

-Regards
Ramesh

[T G Manikandan]

Hello,
HP openview family is a good choice.
Vantage Point operations and Network Node Manager with Perfview and Glanceplus integrated is a good choice.Even you can use crystal reports to get good reports.
There's lot and lot.
openview.hp.com will provide you good solutions.
Thanks
G manikandan