rPath, provider of automating system provisioning and maintenance solutions, today announced it is adding support for configuration management to its system automation solution.
Effective immediately, rPath will support interoperation with key open source configuration management tools, including Reductive Labs’ Puppet, Cfengine, and Opscode’s Chef. During the second half of 2010, the company will introduce native support for configuration—including native implementation of a configuration management engine—to be delivered as part of its Project Javelin roadmap.S and middleware configuration files typically need to be heavily modified to “contextualize” a system for its local host environment.
Today, rPath supports open source configuration tools such as Puppet, Cfengine and Chef in two ways:
- Side-by-side. Used side-by-side, rPath manages operating system, middleware and application software while a third-party configuration tool manages configuration files. No changes or integrations are required in either system.
- Deploy and manage. rPath can deploy and manage configuration tool scripts, managing the regularly-changing scripts under version control and alongside software system manifests. Scripts are easily deployed and reproduced, and changes to the scripts can be easily rolled back. Unique configuration scripts can be managed together with specific system manifests to ensure they’re coordinated and synchronized as they move together through the release lifecycle.
Going forward, rPath will also support configuration natively as part of Project Javelin.
Among other areas, the rPath roadmap invests heavily in model-driven and version-controlled configuration management to extend its next-generation system automation platform. Since configuration requirements are highly diverse across enterprises, rPath is investing in and natively supporting two complementary approaches to configuration:
- Version-controlled CIM (Common Information Model). rPath will bring full CIM-based configuration management under system version control, making it easy to model, deploy and update consistent systems by simultaneously deploying systems and their supporting configurations. rPath’s CIM engine will be compatible with both Windows and Linux environments.
- Direct configuration templating. rPath will let users templatize and parameterize traditional configuration files under system version control. Less controlled but easier to adopt than CIM, configuration templating offers a lightweight and ad hoc “backdoor” to fully model-driven configuration, which allows users to easily make changes on the fly.
Both capabilities will be available by Q3 2010.
When these capabilities are delivered, rPath customers will have the option of using these advanced configuration features or continuing to use other tools in conjunction with rPath.
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