Bulk updating dozens of (not identical) servers

[John Pugh]

Sounds to me like you need landscape [1]. Simple, administrative way via
a browser to see and manage updates to the entire server infrastructure.

JP
[1] https://landscape.canonical.com/

On 01/27/2011 11:35 PM, Carlos A. Carnero Delgado wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> the number of servers we have in my organization -- both physical and
> virtual -- is slowly increasing at a steady pace, and the trend will
> continue for the foreseeable future. It has come to the point that
> apt-get upgrading && updating each one individually, and manually, is
> really time consuming and prone to errors. We're looking into stuff
> like Puppet and Cfengine, and it seems that either will do fine, but
> we have this "feeling" or notion that they're a little bit heavyweight
> for our needs. Not to mention the learning curve.
> 
> So, in the context of *only* dealing with installed packages updates
> in an automated way[1] and having 8.04 and 10.04 LTS releases in
> service, do you guys recommend anything? Did you write custom code?
> Has anyone seen Fabric in the context of systems administration?
> 
>   [1] Please note that automated here really means "bulk updating" started
>        from a command (or thingie) given by an administrator. It should not
>        be interpreted as autonomously contacting repos.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Carlos.
>