Big Engine

Cfengine [1] is a flexible framework for automating system administration tasks. With Cfengine, you can manage one machine or a heterogeneous network. The first version of Cfengine was released more than 15 years ago by Mark Burgess, a professor at Oslo University. According to usage estimates, Cfengine has managed more than 1 million computers over the years. Version 3 of the Cfengine framework rolls out some new capabilities and does away with all the old historical layers. The developers have even retooled the language so that all elements are handled in a uniform way.

To show what is possible with Cfengine 3, I introduce various Cfengine components in a running example. To follow along, you need two networked Linux machines that I call PolicyServer and Client. The end goal is to have the client machine running a fully configured and managed Apache web server, with no manual configuration required, other than installing Cfengine.

The basic model I use will store and distribute all of the policy code centrally from a single server. Cfengine can be used many ways because it is very flexible, but this is a common design, and it serves many sys admins well. PolicyServer will hold and make available the central repository of Cfengine code, and the Client machine will receive the Apache configuration.

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