# FreeBSD datacenter management alternatives.



## cucu007 (Apr 22, 2011)

Dear all,

I have been in the process of migrating some of our servers from Windows to FreeBSD. Quite a challenge but doable I think. The only problem I have experienced is the pain in my fingers from using the command line. I have tried configuring every single service using the shell and it is very time consuming working with all the configs. My co-workers look at me and think that I am nuts. Anyway, I was considering installing webmin to have a more intuitive way to configure things. What alternatives do you guys use besides webmin and the shell. Do not get me wrong nothing can beat the power of the shell, those of you that know that  Thank you for any input. :stud


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## silverglade00 (Apr 22, 2011)

We have 26 FreeBSD servers here in our datacenter, including DCHP & DNS clusters. Every one of them is managed with a combination of webmin and ssh. We also have the common configs posted to an internal wiki for copy/paste ease. It really helps that all but a couple are virtual machines, so there is no differing hardware to configure.


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## da1 (Apr 22, 2011)

Have a look at Puppet and Cfengine. It might help you a bit.


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## cucu007 (Apr 22, 2011)

Thank you guys for the tips.


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## nORKy (Apr 22, 2011)

pssh can help you too


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## gordon@ (Apr 23, 2011)

Check out the sysutils/cfengine3 port. It is designed for centralized management.


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## tom-pele (Nov 24, 2011)

*ClusterSSH*

Also check out security/clusterssh for multiple ssh sessions


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## nORKy (Nov 25, 2011)

It's not in ports, but I'm testing "Chef" and I like it


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## olav (Nov 25, 2011)

Use Vim editor
Use public-key authentication for ssh
Learn shell scripting to automate trivial and common tasks
Use a wiki


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