System Management Tools and versions

[Michael Stahnke <mastahnke gmail com>]

One issue with this is that when managing systems, often times you
manage multiple releases (e.g. RHEL 4/5/6).  If cfengine3 is available
on 6, I either have to build cfengine3 on 4/5 or get cfengine2 working
on 6 in order to truly manage the environment.  This is the same issue
we have with the puppet packages as well.  To me, I want them the same
on all releases, but as per the EPEL policy, you'll probably have
increasingly antiquated versions that probably are not compatible with
each other.  I wanted to bring this up in the EPEL meeting last week,
but I forgot.

What are the thoughts on system management tools where a centralized
master is required and is often used to manage multiple versions of
the operating system?

I am sure there are examples other than cfengine and puppet, also.


stahnma