Feeling overwhelmed by complexity of Puppet, Chef, Ansible or other server configuration tools?

Scared of complex and possibly buggy software, that might become an attack vector?

Manage many different servers for many different customers, where storing passwords etc. in single repository for all customers is not an option?

Server Farmer is the right tool for you.

Me (the original author) and my company manage many servers with high-risk confidential data (mostly medical) and simply can't manage them via Puppet/Chef, at least via single Puppet/Chef instance shared between customers. And having multiple instances of such software is way too expensive. Server Farmer solves this problem by requiring only one central server, shared between all your customers.

Also, Puppet is production ready since 2011, and Chef since 2013. Server Farmer was open sourced in 2015, however it successfully managed production servers since 2008.

1. Featherweight.
2. No customer passwords, private keys etc. in repository. All customer-specific or machine-specific configuration done by runtime dialogs, so base Server Farmer can be easily deployed everywhere.
3. Diff friendly: all configuration templates based on default configuration files from each Linux distribution, therefore it's easy to track changes.
4. Tight integration with Cacti monitoring software.
5. Powerful extensions to simplify and automate many admin tasks.

Server Farmer was built around Debian/Ubuntu Linux. It currently supports:

• Debian-based distributions:
  • Debian 4.x (Etch)
  • Debian 5.x (Lenny)
  • Debian 6.x (Squeeze)
  • Debian 7.x (Wheezy)
  • Debian 8.x (Jessie) - current as of 2015
  • Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron)
  • Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)
  • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)
  • Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)
  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)
  • Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander)
  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr)
  • Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet)
• Red Hat-based distributions:
  • Oracle Linux 6.3 - tested with Oracle Database 10g2, 11g, 11g2
  • Oracle Linux 6.6 - tested with Oracle Database 10g2, 11g, 11g2, 12c
  • Oracle Linux 7.1 - tested with Oracle Database 11g2, 12c
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 - latest from 6.x series
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 - latest from 7.x series, current
  • CentOS 5.11 - latest from 5.x series
  • CentOS 6.6 - latest from 6.x series
  • CentOS 7.1 - latest from 7.x series, current
• specialized distributions:
  • cPanel / WHM 11.x on CentOS 6.x (at least 6.3-6.6)
  • Elastix 2.5 and 4.0, Elastix MT 3.0
  • openATTIC 1.x - either VM or installed on Debian Wheezy
  • Proxmox VE 3.x - either standalone or installed on Debian Wheezy
  • Zentyal Server 4.1 - both commercial and development editions

Is this possible to deploy Server Farmer in the cloud?

Yes, Server Farmer fully supports Ubuntu 14.04 HVM on Amazon EC2 (and should work without problems on any OS from the above list). You can even install it on new instances in fully unattended mode. To do it, simply clone this repository and edit credentials/ssh keys:

git clone https://github.com/serverfarmer/cloudfarmer /opt/cloud
vi /opt/cloud/credentials/ssh.keys
vi /opt/cloud/credentials/variables.sh

After you make proper changes to ssh.keys and variables.sh files, you are able to deploy Server Farmer on the new instance just by executing a single command:

/opt/cloud/deploy.sh ec2-hostname.compute.amazonaws.com /path/to/initial/ssh.key

Server Farmer comes with a bunch of powerful extensions, that provide:

• secure, unified configuration of various common software (eg. PHP)
• various tools for infrastructure monitoring and management
• set of production-ready commercial services, just as used at http://fajne.it

/opt/farm/scripts/setup/role.sh sf-helloworld

If installed extension contains setup.sh script, it will be executed right after downloading it.

Support for more distributions can ba added very easily. To do it yourself, look at latest dist subdirectory:

• dist/debian-jessie for Debian-based distributions
• dist/redhat-centos71 for Red Hat-based distributions

Each subdirectory contains set of configuration files taken from distribution's /etc directory, with our patches applied. Now create and install two small virtual machines:

• first with supported distribution, e.g. Debian Jessie
• second with your new distribution

On first VM you can view exact differences between default configuration files and ones from repository, by running e.g.:

diff -u /etc/postfix/main.cf /opt/farm/dist/debian-jessie/postfix.tpl

On second VM you can replicate these changes. Note that you don't have to add all files for all services. If you don't want to configura Postfix on your distribution, just don't add postfix.tpl file. That's all.

Server Farmer repository contains no customer passwords, private keys etc. However it contains sensitive data related to the owner (Tomasz Klim or Klim Baron Business Solutions Sp. z o.o.).

If you want to fork this repository, you probably will want to change them. All such data are stored in scripts/functions.custom file. First of all, change "tomaszklim.pl" domain to your own one (enabled catch-all is required).

You can buy commercial support at http://fajne.it

We can help you adjust Server Farmer to your needs, or we can manage your servers for you (including 24/7 telephone support and monitoring).