Mandriva recently released an update to their Enterprise Server product line. This new version, 5.1, is focused on improving virtualization and providing easy-to-use administrative tools. According to Mandriva’s website, the new Enterprise Server is compliant with Linux Standard Base 4.0 and comes with five years of support. The company has provided trial versions in the form of installation discs and VirtualBox images. For my journey into the Enterprise side of Mandriva, I downloaded an image for VirtualBox.
Getting started with Mandriva Enterprise Server (MES) is very similar to getting any other main stream Linux system up and running. In my case, since I was starting with an existing virtual image, Mandriva presented me with a GRUB boot menu and, from there, kicked off the first-run wizard. The wizard asks the user for their preferred language and displays the product’s license for approval. The wizard then walks the user through setting the current time, picking a time zone and choosing a keyboard layout. In each case, common defaults are provided. The last two steps are to set the administrator’s password and create a non-root account. From there, the user is presented with a fairly standard, nicely themed login screen.
The MES desktop is, by default, a blue-themed Gnome environment. Aside from the standard menus and clock, there are prominent icons for accessing Firefox, a terminal, the Control Center and a link labelled Mandriva Server Setup. Being a server system and not designed primarily for desktop use, the application menu of MES is a bit sparse. Aside from Firefox (version 3.0) the OS comes with Tightvnc, a dictionary, text editor and image viewer. There are also the usual collection of Gnome tools for changing the desktop’s appearance, adjusting the volume, setting up printers, browsing folders and monitoring the system. But the highlight of any Mandriva release is the Control Center. The all-in-one interface for managing the OS is probably the most inclusive and intuitive configuration tool out there and it makes setting up a server (or workstation) easy, even for less experienced Linux admins. The Control Center contains tools for managing packages, configuring sound and setting up X. It also has features for managing printers and scanners, configuring the network and managing the firewall. Rounding out the options, there are tools for sharing folders, viewing and searching through system logs, creating user accounts, setting parental controls and and fine tuning security. Additionally, the administrator is able to set up snapshots via a very flexible and powerful backup application. Each of these components worked well for me and I encountered no problems.
The Mandriva Server Setup icon opens a web interface to the server where the system administrator is able to select various server components to install and configure. The service is very user-friendly and walks the admin through installing and setting up the Mandriva Directory Server, Samba, a mail server, DHCP, DNS, various databases, backup tools, virtual machine and LAMP packages. The web interface shows what has been installed, what can be installed and makes setting up the necessary building blocks a point-n-click process.
Performance of MES is hard to properly judge since I was running it in a virtual machine. But, during my experiment, the desktop was snappy and the system generally used less than 400MB of memory (including cache), even when logged into the Gnome desktop and running a handful of network services. Though certainly not a minimal server environment, it compares well against other graphical server operating systems, such as OpenSolaris or Windows 2008.
Package management is handled by Rpmdrake. It’s a fairly standard graphical package manager with a list of software categories down the left side of the window. Packages, with their current versions, are displayed down the right side and a description of selected software is displayed at the bottom of the window. The user can filter packages based on various criteria, such as available security updates, all updates, or packages with GUIs. Though the interface is simple and easy to use, it’s also flexible. Because I was using a trial version of MES, I wasn’t connected to the update repositories automatically. Shortly after logging in, an applet appeared on my menu bar and offered to connect me with Mandriva’s software repositories if I had an account. People with trial accounts get a month of free updates while they test drive the distribution.
Security is a big topic when dealing with a server system and not one I can adequately cover here, but Mandriva gets the administrator off to a good start. For instance, the system insists on creating a regular (non-root) user account during the first-boot process. Remote root logins through secure shell are blocked and most other network services are not running by default. I found users’ home directories are not open to be read by other users and logging in locally as root turns the desktop wallpaper a bright red. Furthermore, the Control Center has some excellent security tuning and auditing tools to help the administrator keep the system locked down.
Last fall I took Mandriva’s desktop system, Mandriva 2010, for a test drive and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The Mandriva developers make one of the most user-friendly, stable and elegant systems in the Linux ecosystem. Having played with their Enterprise Server, I find it to be in the same class of excellence. The Enterprise Server is fast, stable, easy to configure and wonderfully intuitive to use. One of the things I enjoyed most about using MES is it does a great job of balancing giving information to the user while staying out of the way. There aren’t any annoying pop-ups and neither is the user left alone in an empty sea of UNIX. The Control Center continues to be one of the best all-in-one configuration tools on the market and I like the work the developers have put into installing services as building blocks. Having played with MES for a week, setting up services, running and restoring backups and managing accounts, I’ve encountered no problems. The system feels polished and well tested, suitable for a business environment and the price tag makes Mandriva’s Enterprise Server a good option for small and medium organisations who are looking for an inexpensive solution.
There really isn’t anything here that would make me switch from Suse or RedHat for my linux server OS of choice.
This should be probobly named MES[S], but I am aware of the fact that there are many corporate users willing to put their time and effort in the never-ending fight with RH-based OS
Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t say YOU shouldn’t use it – I just say I would definitely not use it. There are plenty of great OSS OSs out there with good commercial support. If I were *again* to choose the right thing for the company I use to work in, it would probobly be OpenBSD/FreeBSD with custom commercial support or some decent and stable linux implementation of server OS like Slackware/Arch/maybe Gentoo. That’s what sound reasonable *to me*.
WTF?
If you really think that a server needs GUI config tools, at least use something actually lightweight to start them — like IceWM.
Edited 2010-04-05 21:08 UTC
Xserve?
Apple does not have more than one graphical environment for Mac OS X.
Mandriva, being a Linux distributor, has dozens at its hand.
IMO SUSE does it right: YaST also works in text mode. In that mode it doesn’t look that fancy, but works exactly as the GUI versions:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yast_ncurses.png
Text mode is also faster to operate remotely.
You can run all of Mandriva’s config tools in text mode too. Type in mcc for the control center, XFdrake for the X configuration tool and so on.
If Linux distributors are ever to get out of the stupid hole they have dug themselves in competing with each other, and especially Red Hat, and trying to move into the areas that Windows Server is used in then admin tools, graphical and otherwise, are a must. That doesn’t mean that you can’t run the thing headless.
Unfortunately for Mandriva, they aren’t going to make even a small splash with this.
Why were you writing me this reply? I never argued against config tools. I argued against full-blown desktop environments on servers. IceWM ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceWM ) doesn’t look fancy, but who needs more than a start menu to start config tools?
Hi, I am your friendly marketing advisor and would like to introduce to you how we, the marketing guys, think (we call it “think” for your better understanding – it’s a cool marketing term).
First of all, customers, especially potential ones, judge by first sight. The visual impression is the most important one. It’s even more important than functionality. Visual impression is the most important part of product presentation.
As the article clearly states the important things. Please re-read the paragraph directly beneath the first picture. And see the picture, isn’t it lovely?
As I said, we want customers to buy our product. Those customers usually use “Windows” servers, so our server product must eactly look and feel the same so they feel comfortable and happy with it. Therefore it’s neccessary that the customer doesn’t have to know or learn or even understand anything. He just goes there and clickityclick. Now he is a server administrator, and a very professional one. And that’s what he paid for.
The goal of “server” is not to provide functionality, services, data or something complicated – it has to be entertaining in order to sell well.
Trust me, I’m always telling the truth. It’s for your best. Now believe me. Buy it! Buy it NOW!
************************
Okay, don’t take my comment too seriously. 🙂
Let me continue in a more educated way. The article states that there are even web-based administration tools available. This would give three options for administrators: Text (usually comfortable through SSH or serial console), X based, and web based. It may be seen as an advantage as well as a disadvantage to have all three of them available in the default configuration. Often, server admins prefer CLI based tools for best productivity, and web-based components that can help to delegate lower priority tasks to deputy personnel.
Basically, I want to say that the choice of Gnome is understandable, because it provides a mature desktop environment for administration purposes (again, one could argue if administration needs desktop). The choice woule have been between the “two established ones”, Gnome or KDE. Things like Xfce, and so IceWM, WindowMaker or Blackbox are completely out of scope. Well, even FVWM or XFCE 3 would be a choice when it’s about “lightweight”. On the other hand, servers are full of resources that can be utilized, so some gigabytes on disk and in RAM are really no problem. And as always, when you’re a half-way skilled admin: If you don’t like it, turn it off. MES, finally, walks a different way, which is understandable: First, provide everything that could be needed. If the admin decides NOT to need it, he will switch it off anyway.
By the way, you can make IceWM look “fancy” very easily. One of its strengths is a text-based configuration file directory.
Personally, I do basically agree with your statement – which illustrates (1st) how old I am and (2nd) how old-fashioned I think. 🙂
The problem with that is that when you start writing the admin tools that many will want, you need the infrastructure and development environment to run them. You can’t just do that in some ‘lightweight’ WM in a vain attempt to save resources.
Uhm…Both RHEL and CentOS server comes with GNOME.
Are They joking to us!?! Please, Mandriva S.A., guillotine all your marketing people. NOW.
Look most of you are much better at this admins stuff than me. No doubt you can install Cent OS, NetBSD etc in a morning to do everything you want without even looking at a man page. Obviously this server is not for you.
Personally I need Google, I am going to paste some of those commands into a terminal, some good GUI tools too that would be cool – I know most of you will despise YAST and not without good reason, however, for me it can give me a leg up and is handy. Web tools yes Webmin I use that too I need all the help I can get.
Would I have a look at Mandrake server – yes – could they have used a lighter Windows manager than Gnome, yes they could – but I can live with that – at least they didn’t use KDE4.
Why do I do it? – well there’s probably only a dozen, people in the entire country that know as much or more than me and a Windows admins might know less.
OK I might not be quite a crap as I’m implying (yes I can see the power of the command-line and use it) but it’s a steep learning curve and this stuff isn’t easy. This is also only about 5 – 10% of my Job
Edited 2010-04-06 10:17 UTC