Configuration Management

Rudder – Continuous Configuration for Effective Compliance

Rudder is an audit and configuration management utility to help automate system configuration across large IT infrastructures.

Rudder relies on a lightweight local agent installed on each managed machine (derived from CFEngine 3).

This is free and open source software.

Rudder is made of several components:

  • A central server (written in Scala) that defines the configurations to apply and collects application reports, with a focus on continuously checking configurations and centralising real-time status data. A graphical builder lowers the technical level required to define policies. Each policy can be independently set to be automatically checked or enforced on a policy or host level.
  • Agents installed on the managed nodes. As they are very lightweight (10 to 20 MB of RAM at peak) and fast (they are written in C and takes less than 10 seconds to verify 100 rules), they run on almost every kind of device, so you’ll be managing physical and virtual servers in the data center, cloud instances, and embedded IoT devices in the same way. Installation is self-contained, via a single package, and can auto-update to limit agent management burden.
  • Relay servers (optional) that allows managing nodes in different networks, or on different site through a single entry point.

Features include:

  • Host inventory.
  • Feature-complete Web interface.
  • Standardized, reusable policies.
  • Custom Policy editor.
  • Central reporting and historic information for policy applied to hosts.
  • Grouping based on search queries run against inventory.
  • Automatic updating of such groups (dynamic groups).
  • Dynamic generation of per-host policies (lessens risk of data leaks from shared policy).
  • Change Request / Validation.
  • REST API.
  • Git backend.

Website: www.rudder.io
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Normation
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Rudder is written in Scala and Rust. Learn Scala with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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