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On 06/01/13 23:30, Rob Beard wrote: > > Interesting, thanks for the heads up. I'll take a look when I have a > bit of time. Where I work we must have about 40 or so desktops (give > or take) and they are mainly Windows desktops. I've had a look at the > Microsoft solutions in the past but they tend to require Windows > servers. I'll be sure to have a play with it, I think I'd probably > prefer doing stuff via the command line and cron jobs anyway :-) > > Saying that we're quite busy at work so I'll add it to my bookmarks > and come back to it when I have more time (or maybe look at it at home > sometime when I have a bit of time, if it can keep the many desktops > and laptops of friends and family up to date that could be useful > too... only recently I had a look at my dad's laptop and found it > seriously out of date, and my step-dad's laptop was still running Mint > 11 :-s, although it's now running Mint 13, so hopefully good until > 2017 or until it gets replaced, whichever is sooner). > > Rob > Ah, let me try and save you a bit of time then Rob. If you've only got ~40 desktops and they're mostly Windows, Puppet really isn't the tool for you. I do actually have a Puppet setup at home which I use amongst other tools to largely automate easy linux deployment on the endless stream of friends/family laptops that I inevitably end up dealing with, but then I'm also the sort of person who has a RS6000 in the garage. I literally don't understand the meaning of "overkill" when it comes to IT :] What you do want is Spiceworks, which will make general admin and monitoring a lot easier for you (I'm presuming you're the admin guy). Not my favourite tool, but I'm in a minority and I think for you it's a definite. You didn't say, but do you have any Windows server boxes there at all? Sounds like you're a pretty small operation and you probably don't have much of a budget so a Server 2008R2/2012 license may be pushing it but your life will be so much easier with a proper DC in there, if you don't already have one. If money is really short, then I humbly suggest your limited learning time - god I know that feeling - would be much, *much* better spent getting a really solid Linux server box up and installing Samba4 for handling the Windows boxes. Hardly any distros are shipping non-betas yet but building the proper 4.0 release isn't particularly difficult and then you've got a large percentage of a Windows DC for free: you can even install the remote administration tools on a Windows box and use them to log in and control the Samba server. It's pretty damn cool. You won't get WSUS though, which is a fantastic bare-metal deployment/update/management centralised control tool. Probably still a bit over the top for your organization though, I doubt you need to PXE boot and re-image boxes that often. Now this is even more insanely overkill, but there is a Puppet-like framework called "Chef": it's been commercialised, slightly ruined and has gone all 'cloudy' recently like every other damn thing but at rock bottom it's still monetarily free, very powerful, and is more Windows friendly, although handles Linux better. It also requires quite a lot of learning and tweaking to get the most out of it. I don't know it nearly as well as Puppet so I'm not really qualified to properly evaluate it fairly. But in case you're interested in at least checking all the options out: http://www.opscode.com/ Cheers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq