Ansible Agent Option?
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Imagine if we redefined backups as different animals based on being pre-installed agent (StorageCraft) or injected agent (Veeam.) Same purpose, used in the same places, usually interchangeable, just how the agent gets there differs. It wouldn't make sense.
That's what we are dealing with here. One injects the agent at run time (Ansible), one leaves it there (Salt.) One is "call in", one is call out. But the actual fundamental tooling is essentially identical.
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@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@DustinB3403 said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce Just take MDM and SM out of the equation.
He wants FM
Fleet Management for everything a client has.
Then one of the tools i mentioned here. Even LogMeIN would work. SaltStack is not a good way to do that either from an MSP perspective... there's no client management interface like you'd want for simple management, monitoring, etc...
Why is Salt not ideal for an MSP? It's pretty ideal IMHO. Ansible would be better, likely, if it had an agent. But LogMeIn sure doesn't compete with Salt, not in the slightest. I literally know of nothing that competes with Salt.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
Nope, the management is absolutely identical in every way. Not one iota different.
IF that was the case, then Ansible would just work like a real MDM or DM solution would. LIke Intune, Jamf, SCCM, mobileiron, even ESET, etc... anything with an agent basically. Ansible is not for managing mobile devices. A device i can consider mobile if it's not on the same LAN as the management server.
You are defining big concepts, like MDM and state management machines, by their use of an agent or not. That's not the same thing. The state machine world has both agent based, and agentless, and both options within it.
Using the limitations of a LAN as a way to define kinds of software is a very odd approach to taxonomy.
You want a device management tool, not SaltStack/Ansible/Chef/Puppet/DSC.
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@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
Nope, the management is absolutely identical in every way. Not one iota different.
IF that was the case, then Ansible would just work like a real MDM or DM solution would. LIke Intune, Jamf, SCCM, mobileiron, even ESET, etc... anything with an agent basically. Ansible is not for managing mobile devices. A device i can consider mobile if it's not on the same LAN as the management server.
You are defining big concepts, like MDM and state management machines, by their use of an agent or not. That's not the same thing. The state machine world has both agent based, and agentless, and both options within it.
Using the limitations of a LAN as a way to define kinds of software is a very odd approach to taxonomy.
You want a device management tool, not SaltStack/Ansible/Chef/Puppet/DSC.
How is Salt not the definitive device management tool? In what way does LMI or something else compete for managing devices?
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Salt will allow for essentially unlimited system management, with state which is absolutely critical, with monitoring and reporting, with LAN or without LAN, and doesn't need anything installed that can't be found in Chocolatey (not as good as needing nothing at all, but close.)
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@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@DustinB3403 said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce Just take MDM and SM out of the equation.
He wants FM
Fleet Management for everything a client has.
Then one of the tools i mentioned here. Even LogMeIN would work. SaltStack is not a good way to do that either from an MSP perspective... there's no client management interface like you'd want for simple management, monitoring, etc...
Why is Salt not ideal for an MSP? It's pretty ideal IMHO. Ansible would be better, likely, if it had an agent. But LogMeIn sure doesn't compete with Salt, not in the slightest. I literally know of nothing that competes with Salt.
I get that you want to use it to ensure for example 7-zip is on every device you want to manage. I understand you would do that with SS/Ansible/etc.... normally. But your situation is not the design intentions, even though a specific task you want to do is. I can't explain it much more than that. You're an MSP wanting to manage user and server devices of multiple clients (or tenants) or whatever I assume, and want to make sure there's a standard configuratino on all the devices? If that's the case the idea of using a config management tool like SaltStack or Ansible doesn't make sense because of former, but would with just the latter, but thats not the... I don't know how to say it. Some parts of that make sense, but not the top level view of what it actually is.
Just use SaltStack then, if you can't use Intune, Jamf, SCCM, etc. Note that all device management tools use an Agent, and the other stuff I'm talking about either does not, or it can, but that doesn't mean that's the purpose of what you want to do in a grand view.
SInce what you want to do is simple, and SS works, why not use it? That's what doesn't make sense.
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When Ansible and SaltStack were initially designed, was everyone running out there with it for managing their companies Windows user devices... desktops and laptops? Making sure it has printers, and chocolatey, etc.? No.
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@coliver said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
A simple test would be this.... if MDM is the right tool for your laptops, then it would also be the right tool for your servers.
Servers are not mobile devices.
Nor are Desktops but it would be nice to manage them with the same tool. Intune comes to mind it will do some state management and is getting better with time...
Nobody is managing servers with Intune. They are using SaltStack/Ansible/Chef/Puppet/DSC/SCCM for servers. NOT Intune. Also, Intune doesn't even support Server OSs.
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@DustinB3403 said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@DustinB3403 said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@coliver said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
Why not have an Ansible server on the same network as the devices and reachable by the Ansible server?
From an MSP perspective that can get pretty inefficient and heavy.
Why is an MSP wanting to manage client user Windows devices with Ansible? That doesn't make much sense and not really what it's for.
Because they're being paid to manage them.
Then they should manage them with MDM software.
And which MDM would recommend?
How the hell do I recommend MDM software based solely on the fact he wants some unknown to me configuration on some unknown to me devices in unknown environments?
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
Salt will allow for essentially unlimited system management, with state which is absolutely critical, with monitoring and reporting, with LAN or without LAN, and doesn't need anything installed that can't be found in Chocolatey (not as good as needing nothing at all, but close.)
SO why are you not using SaltStack then? SaltStack and do ANYTHING to a Windows device. How? It can run PowerShell, and it can run scheduled tasks with any configuration. I can think of no case SaltStack wouldn't work for some configuration on a Windows device. SaltStack is like the only exception to the rule, so why not use it?
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@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@coliver said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
Why not have an Ansible server on the same network as the devices and reachable by the Ansible server?
From an MSP perspective that can get pretty inefficient and heavy.
Why is an MSP wanting to manage client user Windows mobile devices with Ansible? That doesn't make much sense and not really what it's for.
Even not an MSP, why would anyone want to use anything but state machines for managing their machines?
This kinda sounds like you wanna run DeepFreeze on all machines, except for a small area of the disk the users are allowed to write to. that does actually sound awesome - as long as you can prevent execution of programs from that space.
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@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
A simple test would be this.... if MDM is the right tool for your laptops, then it would also be the right tool for your servers.
Servers are not mobile devices.
Nor are desktops. They are all the same. Everything is somewhat mobile, nothing is totally stationary or totally mobile. They are just "computing devices". Needing to define their rate of mobility as a part of their ability to be managed would be a failure of any solution.
That's not the whole point. It's Device management versus configuration / state management.
I'm late to this game - what is the difference here?
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@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
I get that you want to use it to ensure for example 7-zip is on every device you want to manage. I understand you would do that with SS/Ansible/etc.... normally. But your situation is not the design intentions, even though a specific task you want to do is.
I don't think that that is true. At least with Salt, this is the intended use case. Laptops aren't a special case, they are a one user local GUI server and should (or can) be treated as such and Salt is engineered ground up for that.
MDM isn't, it's designed for a one off task, yes, but not the general case. The thing that makes Salt powerful is that it addresses the "universal case" or as close to it as is reasonably possible and doesn't make any special cases or exceptions.
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@Dashrender said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@coliver said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
Why not have an Ansible server on the same network as the devices and reachable by the Ansible server?
From an MSP perspective that can get pretty inefficient and heavy.
Why is an MSP wanting to manage client user Windows mobile devices with Ansible? That doesn't make much sense and not really what it's for.
Even not an MSP, why would anyone want to use anything but state machines for managing their machines?
This kinda sounds like you wanna run DeepFreeze on all machines, except for a small area of the disk the users are allowed to write to. that does actually sound awesome - as long as you can prevent execution of programs from that space.
DeepFreeze is a different concept, but could have overlapping use cases. DF is about preserving a single state. State machines are about defining and managing state, which is assumed that it will change (possibly often.)
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@scottalanmiller I assume that Salt/Ansible have some way of removing software from a computer that you don't is not part of what you have in the state?
Same goes for user accounts on the machine. Let's assume the user has local admin rights - they create more accounts - I assume that Salt/Ansible have ways to remove those accounts when their refresh period takes place?
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@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
SO why are you not using SaltStack then? SaltStack and do ANYTHING to a Windows device. How? It can run PowerShell, and it can run scheduled tasks with any configuration. I can think of no case SaltStack wouldn't work for some configuration on a Windows device. SaltStack is like the only exception to the rule, so why not use it?
We are, but I want to give Ansible a fair shake and am asking if or how anyone is getting it to overcome this agentless limitation for accessing other machines.
From what I've seen Ansible has more momentum and support (IBM bought them now) and more robust Windows handling. So it would be great if I am just missing a way to add an agent to it. That it is agentless by default is great, it's that it would be wonderful if it had an optional agent (native or third party) that is currently supported.
Salt does both, but no one talks about the agentless method as the agent is so awesome. I was hoping the inverse was happening here.
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@Dashrender said in Ansible Agent Option?:
I assume that Salt/Ansible have some way of removing software from a computer that you don't is not part of what you have in the state?
Absolutely, yes. That's very core to their functionality.
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@Dashrender said in Ansible Agent Option?:
Same goes for user accounts on the machine. Let's assume the user has local admin rights - they create more accounts - I assume that Salt/Ansible have ways to remove those accounts when their refresh period takes place?
Yes, again very core. These are specifically some of the functions that we expect to use (and most everyone does.) Nothing weird here, just part of the power that state machines intrinsically provide.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
I get that you want to use it to ensure for example 7-zip is on every device you want to manage. I understand you would do that with SS/Ansible/etc.... normally. But your situation is not the design intentions, even though a specific task you want to do is.
I don't think that that is true. At least with Salt, this is the intended use case. Laptops aren't a special case, they are a one user local GUI server and should (or can) be treated as such and Salt is engineered ground up for that.
MDM isn't, it's designed for a one off task, yes, but not the general case. The thing that makes Salt powerful is that it addresses the "universal case" or as close to it as is reasonably possible and doesn't make any special cases or exceptions.
In user land there are almost always special cases and exceptions - how do you deal with those with Salt?
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@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@coliver said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
A simple test would be this.... if MDM is the right tool for your laptops, then it would also be the right tool for your servers.
Servers are not mobile devices.
Nor are Desktops but it would be nice to manage them with the same tool. Intune comes to mind it will do some state management and is getting better with time...
Nobody is managing servers with Intune. They are using SaltStack/Ansible/Chef/Puppet/DSC/SCCM for servers. NOT Intune. Also, Intune doesn't even support Server OSs.
True. And having tried it some time ago, at least then, it was horribly anemic. Just no power. I'm sure it has improved, but even rudimentary RMM platforms had more configuration management for machines.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Dashrender said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@scottalanmiller said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@coliver said in Ansible Agent Option?:
@Obsolesce said in Ansible Agent Option?:
Why not have an Ansible server on the same network as the devices and reachable by the Ansible server?
From an MSP perspective that can get pretty inefficient and heavy.
Why is an MSP wanting to manage client user Windows mobile devices with Ansible? That doesn't make much sense and not really what it's for.
Even not an MSP, why would anyone want to use anything but state machines for managing their machines?
This kinda sounds like you wanna run DeepFreeze on all machines, except for a small area of the disk the users are allowed to write to. that does actually sound awesome - as long as you can prevent execution of programs from that space.
DeepFreeze is a different concept, but could have overlapping use cases. DF is about preserving a single state. State machines are about defining and managing state, which is assumed that it will change (possibly often.)
By change often in the case of a laptop/desktop would be that you're updating software? so you want to make sure you always have the latest version? or are you meaning something else?
