architecting your data center

so if you like me suddenly found yourself one day, about 7 years ago, given a brand new environment of 200 servers to install, configure and maintain by yourself, what are you going to do ?

anyways, what did i do? well i pulled out my redhat course books and decided on what i needed and the following is what i came up with. after i give you my list of 7 years ago, i will give you my thoughts of how i would do it today

• dns server - bind
• directory server - openldap
• kickstart server - dhcp, tftp, http
• monitoring - zenoss
• alerting - smstools3
• ticketing - mantisbt
• documentation - dokuwiki
• bash scripts - make reverse dns entry
• remote logging - syslog

however, today i would do it slightly differently and more comprehensively

• dns server and directory server - FreeIPA of which 389 Directory Server is a subset
• kickstart and package repository - spacewalk
• monitoring - zenoss
• alerting - smstools3
• ticketing - mantisbt
• documentation - mediawiki
• configuration management - puppet
• patch management - spacewalk
• password management - opensesame or team pass
• remote logging - syslog
• backups - amanda
• virtualisation - openstack

pls. let me know what you would do different by writing in the comments below