<quote who="Gavin Carr"> > OTOH, most of the server environments I encounter are much smaller than > that; typically 5-15 machines, and usually mostly or all Linux. In this > kind of environment I've found cfengine to be overkill - the learning > curve for the local admins is just too much to justify the benefits.
See, 5-15 machines says "one admin" to me. If that one admin has a tightly honed deployment / change management solution (for example, cfengine), then she won't be overwhelmed when projects (not maintenance or support) start to multiply, or when four machines die at once. Learning cfengine is challenging, but even for small deployments, there's a pretty good saving to be had. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2005: Canberra, Australia http://linux.conf.au/ "Linux continues to have almost as much soul as James Brown." - Forrest Cook, LWN -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html