[Beowulf] Configuration change monitoring

[Tim Cutts]

On 29 Aug 2007, at 9:22 am, Walid wrote:

> What do HPC sites use for configuration/change management, and  
> configuration
> monitoring other than cfengine, pupet (agent based), are there any  
> agentless
> monitoring tools available to check for inconsistencies of of a  
> node from
> other nodes, or deviation from a policy.

We use cfengine.  But it's not agentless.  Think about it.  How can  
you possibly have an agentless program to do what you want to do?   
You have to have an agent program, because at least some of the  
configuration files are going to be resident on the node itself, and  
those files cannot be read from an external process without running  
an agent on the node.

Nagios can be agentless, but it won't tell you anything about  
deviation of config files on the machine; all it will do is tell you  
whether the machine is up and monitor whether it's running  
appropriate services.

Tim


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