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Agile system management in large-scale environments with Func

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Article from ADMIN 03/2011

By Thorsten Scherf

Running a handful of commands on a large number of systems is a classic admin problem. Func gives administrators a useful alternative to loops and SSH connections.

Updating the Apache package or retrieving information from the system quickly is more easily said than done, especially if you need to perform the same task on a whole group of servers. Using a for loop to open an SSH connection to each of the servers and running the update command is a quick workaround:

# for i in `seq 1 10`; do ssh www$i update httpd; done

If the administrative SSH key is stored on the system, the call will work without manual authentication, but a more elegant solution would be preferable. Func (Fedora Unified Network Controller) [1] offers a dedicated, authenticated, encrypted communication channel instead (Figure 1). The channel is set up between a centralized management system (Overlord) and all the client systems (Minions). The certmaster tool acts as a centralized PKI instance and handles certificate management.

Figure 1: Overview of features for the Fedora Unified Network Controller (Func).

Func is based on a large number of modules available on any client system. Each of these modules provides various methods that can be called via the centralized management system or from other client

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