Lurker speaking... beware... I have been talking with some folks from various industries about configuration systems ala Bcfg2, Puppet, Chef, and others. Many of them care far too much about the current nodes configuration status as some admin had logged in and changed something. I am authoring a system called Enablement that uses what ever technology needed (ssh, telnet over admin vlan, rsh, etc...) to push a planned system/config to the device. Monitoring and auditing are all the same at the moment as we need historical data on when a service or port started and stopped offering its planned or unplanned service. For a meeting Thursday I am looking forward to the future of configuring systems. My idea is push + netblock scanning of services. With stacks for clouds we can startup and shut down nodes easy. Would a bend over backwards config reader for all the "Configuration Management Systems" be the best medium ground from the service provider point of view? Enablement.... Send another man to fight on the front line. -- ~ Andrew "lathama" Latham lathama@gmail.com http://lathama.net ~