Open Source Alternatives

At the time of this writing some OS solutions exist for several enterprise functions. Here are some of them that could help manage Linux and end user systems.


OS Applications for Central Authentication:

• Apache Directory Project
• 389 Directory Server
• OpenLDAP with Kerberos

OS Applications for Systems Management:

• Puppet - Complete configuration and update management.
• Spackwalk - Complete configuration and update management from Red Hat.
• Cobbler - Image provisioning with PXE boot.
• ClusterSSH - Generally, not for a very large environment
• Func - This is a Fedora Project. Very cool tool.

Here is a great PDF document that explains how to use Cobbler, Puppet, and Func combined for maximum automation


FOSS Products for Remote [Central] Monitoring

• Nagios
• Zenoss
• OpenNMS

Use Zimbra for mail and calendering; Alfresco for collaboration.