Bug 0 review pls

[Dan Shearer]

On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 04:59:10PM +0100, Matt Darcy wrote:
> Dan Shearer wrote:
> > I have put some text for Bug 0 up at 
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/Bug0
  :
> The aim of the text in the wiki page appears to (in my opinion) be aimed 
> at small/medium intergration targets, which is of course a viable 
> market, hence the focus on things like "gui tools".

That's interesting (and quite possibly valid) but when I wrote it entire focus
of my interest was on medium/large integration targets. It needs to be
understood that in these sorts of corporate markets -- large banks, telcos,
mil/aero, etc -- GUI tools are a precondition to even having a discussion. It
is true that Microsoft is now working hard on producing commandline tools, but
that's an extra. 

Ah, reading further down, you're referring to GUI tools as pretty sugar. Yes,
that would be a poor goal.  We need things that have the concept of repeating
operations on groups of servers, tools like webmine don't even know multiple
servers exist let alone how they might be related! Imagine something with the
topographical understanding of a well-configured nagios and the detailed
operation ability of webmin/$BETTER, and with authentication and fine-grained
ACL control everywhere you browse/manage via LDAP/AD integration, and that's
what I have in mind. I strongly dislike Microsoft Systems Management Server,
but out of the box it is better than anything I can get from OSS with less than
weeks of fiddling. To me GUI tools should build on underlying infrastructure
for provisioning and configuration management, as well as status reporting and
hands-on management for entire networks.

As to the rest of your message, I thought there were really good points there
and I'll reply in another thread about strategy for release cycle and
maintenance. As a detail, you focussed on real hardware installs
whereas very many server installs happen on virtual hardware these days. 

> There is also a lack of enterprise focus for me in Ubuntu server 
> currenty, tools such as Redhats Satellite product which will allow easy 
> mass managment of RHEL server and desktops are core to businesses 
> picking this up.

Has anyone seen a current summary of Linux management products? There are quite
a few of them including
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oem/omp_linux.html , and there's a
2006 article http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/nsm/2006/0306nsm2.html . I
don't feel up to date.

> I'd like to see some good focus and discussion on the points raised 
> above, rather than trying to make "gui" tools for the server release.

If we have a good provisioning, configuration management, hands-on management
and monitoring system, but it hasn't got a GUI, medium and larger corporates
just laugh. You can't even get in the door. I don't say Ubuntu Server
has these things, but it does also have to have a GUI.

-- 
Dan Shearer
dan at shearer.org