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Deployment

There are basically two ways to deploy configuration changes to all concerned systems:

1. Every system knows where to get the newest configuration. To get a change to the systems, it is done on the central repository and an IsiSetup update is run on all hosts.

2. The central repository knows which hosts are affected by every configuration snipplet.

IsiSetup currently uses the first approach. There are tools to run a command like 'isisetup update' on a group of hosts. dsh and screen come to mind. A command line tool would be nice, as it could probably be wrapped by an 'isisetup' command.

Distributed Setup

IsiSetup is deployed on all affected systems, where it can be used localy. It then essentialy boils down to using it as a revision control tool designed to handle configuration changes.

You can use IsiSetup to transfer both host and service configurations between machines. This can be nice if you need to replicate a running system. It can also help migrating services like websites or samba shares to another host.

Centralized Setup

While IsiSetup is a distributed system by design, it makes use of centralization concepts, too. When using a IsiSetupServer, multiple hosts can be configured centraly. This allows to, say, use scripts to add firewall rules on gateways. IsiSetup then can be used on the affected systems to fetch changes. This, too, can be scripted. A IsiSetupServer can additionaly be used to preseed installations of new hosts. Of course there can be more than one IsiSetupServer. They basically are configuration repositories. It is e.g possible to have multiple layers of customizations on IsiSetupServers located at customers while using IsiSetupModule from logas.isisetup.ch.