OPSI in the Municipality of Hertogenbosch

At the municipality of ’s-Hertogenbosch, more than 60 Linux servers are in operation, providing a wide range of services: file servers, workload automation, internal wiki, proxy servers, centralized logging, vulnerability scanning, and more.

These Linux servers are virtual machines running the latest Ubuntu LTS version. Before introducing opsi as a configuration management solution, there were about 45 servers — today there are around 65, and the number is steadily increasing.

Joke Holmer, Senior Infrastructure Specialist in the ICT infrastructure department, is responsible for the Linux servers. Together with her team, she began looking for a solution in October 2018 to manage the virtual servers more efficiently. New instances should not only be provisioned at the push of a button with a fresh Linux installation but also receive configuration files in advance — tailored for their role as test or production systems.

Fresh Code for Rollouts

Even before adopting Ubuntu as the server operating system and opsi as configuration management, the ICT team had long relied on Linux for its servers. A transition from SUSE Linux Enterprise to Ubuntu became apparent when Oracle databases were migrated to Solaris systems for licensing reasons. The team then chose Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) as their preferred Linux distribution.

The new configuration management solution needed to be accessible and easy to learn, backed by professional vendor support, regular updates, and documentation in Dutch or English. Additional requirements included:

• minimal load on the servers,
• support for all major Linux distributions,
• deployment of fresh, OS-level identical installations during rollout.

On the application layer above, Joke Holmer and her colleagues wanted to distribute various configurations automatically and with minimal effort. The configuration management system should not enforce configurations on connected hosts at fixed intervals or overwrite them automatically.

Templates and Configuration via opsi Packages

Four open-source tools were shortlisted — but only opsi (open System Integration) met all requirements. In June 2019, the municipality decided in favor of opsi. Joke Holmer quickly developed the first template for Ubuntu servers, which the opsi server at the municipality of ’s-Hertogenbosch deploys to virtual machines using the Linux agent.

“Even colleagues without (sufficient) Linux knowledge can roll out new servers in a short time thanks to opsi.”

ICT has specific security requirements, such as user and group management and the post-installation of certain packages. New clients must also automatically join the Active Directory domain and receive agents for monitoring and job scheduling — both based on other open-source tools.

In addition, database servers, an internal mail server configuration, and scripts for centralized log file transfer are included. Joke Holmer has built numerous opsi packages that she distributes to the Ubuntu clients. Alongside the base template for OS installation, she delivers targeted configurations using opsi localboot products.

At ICT, client management currently takes place centrally via the graphical management interface opsi-configed. Thanks to this GUI, even colleagues without extensive Linux expertise can roll out new servers quickly and easily.

“With opsi, everything is running smoothly — the system meets all our wishes and requirements.”