[colug-432] Setting Up New Servers

[Joe Strickler]

Echoing what Chris and Scott said: If you're not regularly provisioning
machines, it might be a better use of time to simply make a checklist.
You'll easily spend 5x-10x the amount of time automating each step than you
would just doing it and making a note for next time. (Relevant xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/1319/)

When you have more than a couple dozen machines, investing in a
configuration management tool is a no-brainer. For one or two (or a
handful), it's a choice. If you have the time and energy to devote to
learning and using a configuration management tool, by all means do so! In
any case, it's a good tool to have in your toolbox.

Like Scott, I use Puppet professionally and I quite enjoy it. At the day
job, I can't imagine managing servers without it. I also use it for my
personal machine and server, and even in that limited capacity it's been a
worthwhile investment.

If you do decide to go with Puppet, be aware of "standalone" mode. Many
deployments use an agent/master model, but that's overkill for a small
number of machines. `puppet apply' is your friend for small deployments.

Best,
Joe

On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Rick Hornsby <richardjhornsby at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> > On Apr 16, 2015, at 09:59, Chris Embree <cembree at ez-as.net> wrote:
> >
> > I use Kickstart for base OS stuff plus authorized keys.  From there
> > you can pick and choose your config mgt tool.  I've used cfEngine and
> > Ansible with success.
> >
> > Yes, that means you have to track down all of the changes and make
> > them in your Cfg tool.  It also means you can do that for 1-N
> > additional servers.  If you're just doing a new one every year or so,
> > you might just keep writing things down.
>
> In a small environment (a couple to no more than a handful of hosts) and a
> relatively small amount of post-provision config, I might use a shell
> script.  Beyond that, I’d look at a config management tool like
> cfEngine/Ansible/Puppet/Chef.  Shell scripts really don’t scale all that
> well.
>
> Puppet and Chef can be a little overkill for a few hosts or simple
> configuration changes.  I’m very new to puppet, but you don’t need a full
> puppet or chef infrastructure to use them.  You can copy your puppet
> modules/manifests onto your client system and tell the puppet agent to use
> a local (or NFS/SMB/AFS hosted) manifest to set your configuration.  With
> chef, you can use chef-solo.
>
> I’m still teaching myself puppet, but one of the things I really like is
> that you can describe what you want and puppet makes sure it happens, or
> bails if it does not (Chef can do the same).  When you’re trying to set
> specific parameters in a file, using shell scripts you have do a bunch more
> work in terms of checking “does this exist?” and sometimes end up writing
> complex (brittle?) regex for grep/sed.
>
> Both Puppet and Chef can use ruby templates, and both have ways (community
> written modules, cookbooks) for managing common things like sudoers.
>
>
>
> >
> > $0.02.  YMMV.
> >
> > On 4/16/15, Steve VanSlyck <s.vanslyck at postpro.net> wrote:
> >> Hi everybody!
> >>
> >> Is there anyone here who has ever set up more than two servers? I am
> >> curious about what you may have thought of or done in terms of
> >> automating the process.
> >>
> >> For example getting the sudoers file the way you want it... Adding your
> >> public key... Configuring your bashrc file... You know, all the little
> >> things you do to make the server yours. Not necessarily software
> >> installation although that could be done also.
> >>
> >> I am looking for something that will make the job a little easier to do
> >> than simply writing down on a piece of paper every single thing I do to
> >> configure the box and then following my notes for the next server I set
> >> up.
> >>
> >> Maybe there is a method of running some sort of diff between the two
> >> servers that would focus only on the kinds of things a server admin
> >> would do the first day (assuming he could remember it all, and not
> >> necessarily every single difference between every single file, which
> >> would of course be overwhelming.
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