Distributed Systems Administration Utilities User's Guide, Linux, March 2009

1 Introduction
The Distributed Systems Administration Utilities provide several tools for simplifying the
management of groups of systems and of Serviceguard clusters.
There are three utilities:
• Configuration Synchronization: - with this utility, based on the open source tool cfengine
or “configuration engine,” the administrator can centrally define management actions to be
applied to a set of managed systems. cfengine is a client/server based tool. The central
configuration master system hosts the configuration description file that defines the
management actions to be performed on each managed client. The configuration master
also hosts the “golden image” files, which are master copies of files that are distributed to
the clients. The administrator can use cfengine to perform tasks such as:
— Ensure that client systems are using a correct set of configuration files
— Disable inappropriately configured files on the client
— Check file permissions, ownership, and track checksum changes
— Perform edits to files
— Execute arbitrary shell commands on each client
— Check for processes, signal processes
A Configuration Synchronization Wizard is available to help the administrator quickly
configure cfengine for managing a set of distributed systems or configuring it as a highly
available service in a Serviceguard cluster. This wizard is described in Chapter 2:
“Configuration Synchronization” (page 17). For additional information, see the cfengine
and csync_wizard manpages.
• Consolidated Logging: standard UNIX syslogd offers UDP-based log forwarding to a
central log consolidator today. On Red Hat the DSAU utilities provide the open source tool
syslog-ng or “syslog next-generation.” On SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) the open
source tool syslog-ng is available by default. syslog-ng offers additional features that
make it a powerful tool for log forwarding, log centralization and log consolidation.
The Configuration Synchronization Wizard helps to configure syslog-ng on a log
consolidation server and log forwarding clients. Centralized log consolidation offers the
following benefits:
— Easier log file analysis
A centralized log provides a single location for the administrator to perform log file
analysis. It offers a single view of events that impact multiple systems.
The DSAU utilities are specifically designed to optimize this method for managing a
Serviceguard cluster. Member syslogs and package logs can be centralized for simpler
log file access and analysis. DSAU utilities also allow the cluster to offer a highly available
consolidated logging service.
— Increased security
A security breach might compromise the local logs but not the centralized copy.
— Simplified archiving of logs
It is usually simpler to archive a set of centralized logs rather than per-system logs.
This wizard is described in Chapter 3: “Consolidated Logging” (page 45). For additional
information, refer to the clog_wizard and syslog-ng manpages.
• Command fanout is based on the open source tool Parallel Distributed Shell (pdsh). pdsh
enables the administrator to execute shell commands in parallel across a set of systems. It
can use remsh or ssh as the network transports. The csshsetup tool is provided to simplify
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