MS Beta Software To Manage Unix/Linux Systems

Tumbleweed writes "The Cross Platform and Interop team at Microsoft today announced some new beta products for managing Unix/Linux systems from MS Operations Manager 2007, as well as connectors for HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console. Both betas are available at Microsoft Connect (search for systemcenter), according the blog."

"Resistance is futile..."

[BUL2294 (1081735)]

"You will disarm your command prompts and escort us into Linux as root. If you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you."

Re:"Resistance is futile..."

[ClickOnThis (137803)]

"You will disarm your command prompts and escort us into Linux as root. If you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you."

I think MS would like to destroy Linux whether anyone "intervenes" or not.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I do wonder whether this is another "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactic. Or at least an attempt by MS to create a "view" of Linux that it can control, perhaps in a way that is unflattering to Linux.

Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[apoc.famine (621563)]

Wtf? The gui tools available NATIVELY don't allow for any comprehensive management of Unix/Linux systems. Less is more, terminal is faster, text over ssh, bash scripting - the entire culture of *nix is anti-gui.

How the fuck is MS going to make a gui to manage such systems?

Or are they just reimplementing an ssh terminal?

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[InlawBiker (1124825)]

Because then, theoretically, you don't have to have both Linux and Windows people on staff. I.T. managers want to hire less people, not more, and the Windows guys are usually cheaper.

Re:Manage Unix/Linux Systems?

[TheRealSlimShady (253441)]

It's an automated monitoring & alerting tool, rather than a GUI tool to perform actions that would traditionally be performed at the command line. So you just let your *nix system run, then when an error occurs (maybe an message gets logged in syslog, maybe a process that should be running isn't), the alerting system can alert you (email, SMS, IM), optionally take corrective action and resolve the issue automatically. You can also collect performance stats etc so you can do capacity planning and analysis. Screen shots here [techlog.org]

Re:Chose Wisely

[Mr. Sketch (111112)]

But seriously, who wants to be managing something with a GUI under Windows

A Windows user?

Microsoft Linux

[calebt3 (1098475)]

So they are building a GUI to manage Linux servers. Could this eventually lead to a MS Linux distribution? (of course one that masks the cli and possibly has it's own proprietary clones of all the 'standard' programs)

Ha, I'm doing just the opposite

[rwa2 (4391)]

A lot of my work these days deals with getting Windows boxes to act more like *NIX boxes so I can operate them remotely from a central Linux box.

It's working out pretty well, actually... I set up cygwin with sshd installed in interactive mode, so I can run a script on the central server and have a cluster of WinXP machines all open an application simultaneously, such as play a video simultaneously or connect to a set of VNC servers all at once. I can also use rsync to efficiently distribute and keep a set of files up to date.

Still running into a bunch of limitations of what I can do remotely, such as set the display mode to a certain resolution, etc. so it ultimately won't keep me from replacing the remote machines with a bunch of custom Knoppix LiveCDs eventually. But at least this way I can still leverage the other Windows sysadmins we have an abundance of.

Ignorance is bliss

[thethibs (882667)]

Does anyone here have even a faint idea of what Operations Manager is? Judging from the posts so far, the answer is obviously "Not a clue".

It's not a remote shell.

"Infringing the GPL?!" LOL!

This may be a good thing in the long run

[mlts (1038732)]

Devil's advocate here:

Long term, this might be a help for Linux and other UNIX variants. A lot of companies are required, either due to regulations, contract or their own corporate policies to perform audits on computer systems. Having a "one stop shop" by MS where someone can punch a button and generate a report on vital machine statistics for every single thing hooked up to the corporate network, down to the USB powered urinals, regardless of OS being run, will allow IT shops more freedom in choosing operating systems.

Having OS independence for this tool would allow a shop to use Linux for a number of servers, but when audit time comes around, it will be as easy to print out a report about the machine's and how it adheres to corporate policy as the Windows machines. Audits of machine and network infrastructure security are a critical part of a lot of businesses and any tool that allows this to be made easier is definitely a help.

Using a tool like this, a business can not just say to a prospective client that "all our network connected computers have antivirus, antispyware, and firewall software installed that are kept updated", but actually show it, by showing a report that even the Solaris boxes have Mcafee installed [1] with current vdef files.

[1]: Yes, we all know about UNIX boxes and viruses, but there are lots of times when virus scanning software has to be present on all machines due to contract or legal reasons, even if the installed program just takes up space in /usr/local and the only thing it does is fire up a cron job to update the virus definitions and occasionally run a filesystem scan.

OH BOY !!!

[unity100 (970058)]

their software cant manage their own systems thoroughly. now its gonna manage linux ? oh boy oh boy oh boy !! hot jupiters !

some more information

[Tumbleweed (3706)]

Yahoo News [yahoo.com]
Microsoft leverages two community projects promoting open protocols for network management-- Web Services for Management and OpenPegasus-- to enable cross-platform support. Microsoft also has joined the steering committee for the OpenPegasus project and will contribute royalty-free code to the project

some articles via Google News [google.com]

Nexus SC: The System Center Team Blog [technet.com]

Information Week [informationweek.com]

Microsoft won't just rip the code from OpenPegasus, but will join IBM, HP and others on the OpenPegasus Steering Committee and contribute code back to the project under the OSI-approved Microsoft Public License, which the Free Software Foundation has said is compatible with the GNU GPL version 3. The terms of the Microsoft Public License mean that any code Microsoft contributes will be freely modifiable and usable by anyone, so long as copyrights in the code are left intact.

"It's very important to me that we use OSI-approved licenses when using open source," Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of platform strategy and one of its top open source advocates, said in an interview.

Microsoft's adoption of OpenPegasus for the Operations Manager add-in could be seen as a small data point that shows Microsoft is getting a little bit more comfortable with the open source world by working with IBM and others on an open source project. It's not like Microsoft is open sourcing all of System Center, but it is a step nonetheless.