Cfengine
Cfengine is a suite of programs for integrated autonomic
management of either individual or networked computers. The main
purpose of cfengine is to allow a system
administrator to create a single central file which will define how
every host on a network should be configured.
With this software installed, an interpreter
runs on every host on your network and parses the master file (or
file-set); the
configuration of each host is checked against this file and then, if
you request it, any deviations from the defined configuration are fixed
automatically.
It takes a while to set up cfengine for a network (especially
an already existing network), but once that is done you will wonder how
you ever lived without it. This software significantly reduces the
amount of time consumed by mundane tasks.
Cfengine consists of a number of components:
- cf-agent
Active agent – responsible for maintaining promises about the state of
your system
- cf-execd
Scheduler – responsible for running cf-agent on a regular (and
user-configurable) basis
- cf-know
Knowledge modelling agent – responsible for building and analysing a
semantic knowledge network
- cf-monitord
Passive monitoring agent – responsible for collecting information about
the status of your system
- cf-promises
Promise validator – used to verify that the promises used by the other
components of cfengine are syntactically valid
- cf-runagent
Remote run agent – used to execute cf-agent on a remote machine
- cf-serverd
Server – used to distribute policy and/or data files to clients
requesting them and used to respond to requests from cf-runagent
- cf-report
Self-knowledge extractor – takes data stored in cfengine's embedded
databases and converts them to human readable form
- cf-key
Key generation tool – run once on every host to create public/private
key pairs for secure communication
Features include:
- A brand new language with a simple uniform syntax and
powerful templating features
- Integrated self-diagnostics and automated self-healing
documentation.
- Many features simplified but extended
- Distributed monitoring and integrated reporting
- Generic file editing with multiple models
- Pattern matching and design features to match any
environment, large and small
- Integrated knowledge management using topic maps
- GPL 3 code for open inspection and security auditing.
- Full integration with existing Cfengine 2 systems
- Auto-encapsulation of Cfengine 2 for incremental upgrade
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Last Updated Wednesday, June 20 2012 @ 04:16 PM EDT
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