The tools well discuss in this article are all free.
Puppet is used for IT automation, orchestration and reporting.
Its important to note that the above only happen when the Puppet agent completes a run.
When this happens it will get the desired configuration from the Puppet master.
By default the Puppet run will happen every 30 minutes.
However, you’re able to change this time.
Puppet MCollective
MCollective is a framework to build server orchestration or parallel job execution systems.
The service is separate to the puppet agent but typically installed with it.
It can scan your internet for virtual machines based on command-line criteria.
The data comes from Puppet, Chef, Facter, and other plugins.
It reads the metadata left behind when you used those tools to build the machines.
Below are some example modules that are available.
There are plenty more that can be downloaded.
Be careful where you use it!
Wireshark
Wireshark is a data pipe protocol analyzer, also known as a data pipe sniffer.
On a security issue note, any snoop tool can only sniff packets going to and from your machine.
On a busy online grid the output from Wireshark will go by on the screen very fast.
you could log the traffic into a .pcap file for review at a later time.
The project is currently no longer supported or maintained by the developer.
However, it still works great.
If it does what you need then you shouldnt have any problems.
If not, dont bother to write for support until someone else takes over the projects source code.
Once configured, you will be able to connect remotely.
Something to be aware of is that VNC is not secure.
To increase security most VNC clients will allow you to tunnel VNC over SSH.
There are VNC clients available for Windows/Linux/Mac OS X so you could connect from almost anywhere.
The firewall is essentially a front end to iptables with plenty of additional useful features.
This allows you to secure your server by locking down both inbound and outbound traffic.
CSF is also able to actively block attacks.
If enough temporary blocks occur they can be blocked permanently as an attacker.
Capistrano
Capistrano is an open source tool written in Ruby for remote server automation and deployment.
you’re free to add other source control management software into Capistrano to expand its capabilities.
It provides operations for executing local or remote shell commands.
You create a module containing one or more functions, then execute them via the fab command line tool.
Once this task is defined, it’s possible for you to run it on multiple servers.
As you’re free to see, this functionality can be quite powerful.
If you look up the MySQL documentation for the various variables it should explain to you how they work.
Poorly set variables can also reduce performance and stability.
