Altiris vs. Landscape

A little delayed post here due to traveling to Austrialia for work, but at UDS-Boston, the Ubuntu Developers Summit, I spent a lot of time with the Ubuntu Server Team. One of things we discussed was the different Lifecyle Management Tools that are open source. I highlighted one in an earlier post, Net Director and then the Ubuntu guys spoke about a project they have called Landscape and I wanted to drop a couple of notes in regards to the presentation they made.  (The more I write, the more I realize it is like comparing apples to oranges)

Landscape is a tool created by Canonical to help manage Ubuntu devices in a Small Business. Landscape helps a system admin monitor and admin his/her Ubuntu systems by installing an agent, which is open sourced in case that matters, and that agent then “phones home” reporting information such as package status, what is stored in HAL, and user management information. Landscape reports this information back to a central server managed by Canonical which one can access via a web page to get information about their systems.

Landscape has 4 areas of focus: Package Management, Monitoring, User Management, and Hardware Inventory. I would like to focus on each area and then how Altiris competes with them. Currently Altiris does not support Ubuntu at all, something I would love to see change.

By using Landscape, one can track the different packages and the relationships of those packages. This also allows for a central apt repository that you can download and install the packages from. This is allows one to manage which packages are on the central apt server and then deploy them from the central apt server limiting the bandwidth out to the Internet. When one goes to install software from Altiris, they do it through a software delivery job and the use of package servers thus controlling bandwidth. However you have to download the packages first from a source (such as an apt repository) and then distribute.  If some how Altiris could work with an apt-mirror or something similar it would be awesome.

The Hardware Inventory focus of Landscape will grab anything that is reported by HAL.  Altiris will inventory the same information.  However where Altiris really shines is the reporting more on that later.

The monitoring section of Landscape is just monitoring services that are available.  Basic monitoring Altiris can do as well.

User Management is a poor man’s LDAP in Landscape and currently does not integrate with any real directory service.  I can read the users that I have on each machine but not control how they are setup.

The real focus or wish I have from the little I have seen Landscape is the lack of real reporting.  Altiris dumps all of its data into a SQL database (Microsoft SQL), but at least it is into a database  I can then run reports off of.  This lack in Landscape is a real weakness. 

Say I want to know how many computers have 2 Gigs of RAM in it?  I can pull this information easily out of Altiris, but can’t do this in Landscape.  From Landscape, I can look at each computer, but I can’t create reports of all of my computers.  I hope this comes in future updates to Landscape… Another part of this reporting that Altiris wins in is through the use of collections and policies based on these collections. 

 

From what I’ve seen in Landscape it looks very promising to help someone in an SMB manage their Ubuntu machines, but really how does it scale for the Enterprise?  Seems like there is a lot of work to be done to get it more enterprise ready.

Thoughts on UDS Boston

I wrote one post about UDS-Boston, the Developers Summit for Ubuntu, previously, and just wanted to drop some thoughts. 

First of all I spent a lot of time with the Ubuntu Server Team.  8.08 is going to rock on the server side.  The team has a lot of super cool ideas they want to implement and I’m looking forward to them.

Secondly it was disappointing not to see more Kubuntu people there.  we had some specs, but it really seemd to be just a converstation between Riddell and myself.  Don’t know if more Kubuntu people were asked and couldn’t come, or there just wasn’t as many people sponsored.  Maybe one day we can get another full-time Kubuntu developer?  Please Mark?

The same problem was there for the Documentation team.  Really being the only doc team member there was another problem.  A lot of people wanted to talk about how documentation is done, the way things are done, etc.  It was interesting how suprised everyone was that there isn’t a paid documentation person.  Maybe this is something Cannonical can look into?

 Anyways justs wanted to drop a copule of notes, before I go watch the football.

Lifecycle Management Tools and Linux

I have been an Altiris consultant for about a year and a half and have tried to understand and learn how Altiris manages things in the Linux world and have been struggeling with seseing adoption with this. Maybe it is because the company I am at, does not have a lot of customers adopting Linux in the desktop world, or is it something because I am in the US?

Right now with Altiris I can use Linux as a preboot operating system in imaging and I can also image Linux desktops using RapiDeploy and I can manage the device inventory wise and software delivery wise via the Notification System.  A small problem has existed with the NS Agent but I have that working.

I have spent the day today with at UDS Boston, the Ubuntu Developers Summit, hanging out with the Server guys trying to learn more about server management and how Ubuntu can fit into that. There have been several interesting discussion tracks today, including one that covers this very topic. We went through a list of Open Source Management Tools and some of the good and bad things that accompany each one. So here is a list of some of them:

1. Nagios
2. Zenoss
3. Cricket
4. Puppet

One of the newer ones that was discussed was NetDirector with the goal of getting into Universe and then hopefully into main. I’m looking forward to downloading it and trying it out. Hopefully more later on this.

BTW still hoping or Cannonical’s Enterprise Management Tool

UDS Boston Day 1 and Day 2

This is my first trip to a Ubuntu Development Summit. I am one of the thankful and greatfull that have been sponsored by Cannonical to come and take a part in this great event. I was totally unprepared as to what would happen and how it would work. But the introductory session by Mark, Jono, and Matt helped gets all ready to rock and roll.

Ubuntu defines its next release round in part through these developer summits. Blueprints are created and submitted via Launchpad and people subscribe to the specs they are interested in. Once you subscribe and either mark yourself as essential (the meeting can’t happen without you) or just a participant the scheduler goes to work trying to fit everyone into the correct time slot to discuss the information. As a member of the Ubuntu Documentation Project and not a developer I went with a very open mind and also a very open schedule. I have been attending a lot of very interesting session in regards to various topics and have learned a lot.

Day 1 involved the getting started talk, a Desktop Roundtable session (actually the table was square, but does it matter), a discussion on the theme of the next release, streamlining processes for development, and finally dial-up support.

Day 2 involved a Server Roundtable, Discussion on a Firewall, Kubuntu and Hardy, Launchpad Usuablity Testing, and a discussion on the logout dialog.

Looking forward to tomorrow and what iwill learn from that….