A few weeks ago I felt a little like a proud pappa, well maybe more like an uncle since I can’t claim to have been present for the conception. NetDirector, an open source configuration management tool that I helped get off the ground has finally been released under the GNU Public License making it a bona fide open source application (it was previously licensed under the NetDirector Public license — the Mozilla Public License with an attribution clause).  NetDirector is a web-based Unix system administration tool that provides the ability to centrally manage  services. The thing that’s makes NetDirector unique is it’s ability to simultaneously manage multiple servers at once from a graphical interface. In comparison to the very popular Webmin which can configure many different services and server attributes but maintains a one-to-one ratio.

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Technorati Tags: Configuration Management, GUI, NetDirector, Project Spacewalk, Puppet, Systems Management

If you want an easy way to install open source software you might want to take a look at Bitnami. There isn’t a huge amount of information about BitNami but a quick whois shows me that Bitnami.com was registered by BitRock founder, Daniel Lopez Ridruejo.

I would guess that this is the same technology as the open source BitRock installer that I have used to install other open source packages for MySQL, SugarCRM and NetDirector. The advantage here is that their stacks are an all inclusive package with dependency resolution that are updated from a single source. It’s the same problem that WISE and Installshield solve for Windows. However, Bitnami has a number of cross-platform packages for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

They also have a voting system to determine what stacks they should package next. So far they have four main stacks (Ruby, LAMP, WAMP, and MAMP) and list about 12 downloads for popular LAMP applications including:

• WordPress
• Joomla!
• Mediawiki
• Dokuwiki
• Drupal

I haven’t had the chance to test the Bitnami stacks on many different Linux distributions yet but if this is really the work of BitRock I am sure it will make it a lot easier for more people to install Linux.

Technorati Tags: Bitnami, Bitrock, Daniel Lopez Ridreujo, LAMP, MySQL, NetDirector, SugarCRM

I was very happy to see this article on CBROnline this week,” Big win for open source in IT management ” it was a success story for Zenoss . That talked about how UTStarcom has chosen Zenoss Enterprise over four of the leading IT management providers. M favorite quote is:

Notch it up as a victory for open source over enterprise software. Zenoss, a provider of open source IT management software, has beaten off competition from four leading commercial software providers to land a deal at global technology firm UTStarcom.

Granted as part of the Zenoss Core project news like this makes me happy but i am especially interested to see any open source make strides in the enterprise. I think open source projects can be a real help in managing your infrastructure for example: puppet , NetDirector , and webmin are good configuration tools. I personally would be lost with out PHPMyAdmin to administer MySQL.

The CBROnline story is climbing the ranks on Digg, if you dig it, please Digg it to help spread the word.

Technorati Tags: MySQL, NetDirector, Open Source, PHPMyAdmin, pupppet, success story, systems managment, webmin, Zenoss