etch-users — General discussion and questions about using etch

[etch-users] Etch 3.2 release

[Jason H. <jh...@ap...>]

Etch 3.2 has been released

Fixed bug in handling of ownership requests involving a user or group  
that doesn't exist on the client system. https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2317757&group_id=234501&atid=1093658

[etch-users] Etch 3.1 release

[Jason H. <jh...@ap...>]

Etch 3.1 has been released

Primarily this release adds in the demo and sample configuration  
directories that were accidentally left out of the 3.0 release.  It  
also includes a minor bugfix with the Red Hat client package.

[Etch-users] Etch 3.0 release

[Jason H. <jh...@ap...>]

Etch 3.0 has been released

Relative to the 2.x series of releases 3.0 represents:

- Re-architected from a client-only architecture to a client-server  
architecture.  While the previous architecture had several things  
going for it (simplicity, scalability) a couple of compelling  
features drove the decision to re-architect:
1) Impact prediction:  In large environments it becomes necessary to  
have automated tools that help determine the potential impact of a  
configuration change.  The environment is too large for any single  
person to know how all the systems interact, the scale of the  
operation means that a bad change could be catastrophic, etc.  With a  
client-only architecture there's no central location that knows the  
state of the client systems and can run tests to predict the impact  
of changes.  It rapidly becomes infeasible to do test runs involving  
all client systems or even a representative subset.  As such you need  
to generate the configuration centrally, and that central system can  
generate prospective configuration changes and compare them to the  
current configuration to assist in impact prediction and risk  
management.
2) Compartmentalization:  The client-only architecture required  
transmitting the complete configuration repository to all clients.   
Although this is fine for many environments there are some cases  
where you don't want all clients seeing the configuration of all  
other systems.  With the client-server architecture only the server  
has access to the complete repository, individual clients are only  
given their specific configuration.

- Complete rewrite from Perl to Ruby.  The server uses the Ruby on  
Rails framework so it shares a similar design and deployment model  
with nVentory, an Open Source asset management and operations  
database that works well with etch.  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ 
nventory/

Some relevant links:
http://etch.wiki.sourceforge.net/
http://etch.wiki.sourceforge.net/ConvertingFromEtch2ToEtch3
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=234501