pkg integration spacewalk question

[Jason Helfman]

Hello All,

I am mainly using Linux (RedHat) at work, at the moment, however I am using
FreeBSD as my desktop. A tool I was introduced to recently is SpaceWalk. I
have already had some thoughts shared regarding this tool, but for doing
what little we use of it, it is pretty good.

http://spacewalk.redhat.com/

At a basic level, you can have spacewalk subscribe to modern based
repositories (much like pkg is now), and list the subscribed systems in a
particular group and how out-of-date they may be with software.

I made a brief inquiry to the development list, and received this feedback:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/spacewalk-devel/2013-August/msg00064.html

Beyond patching, it is also good for send a remote command to a remote
host, and there are some other features that are worth looking into.

The reason I bring this up is that I don't know of an Enterprise Level
software package, or even open source, that gives you a view into your
FreeBSD systems, and a tool to manage them effectively.

Sure I can create a shell script that goes to each server and does a pkg
upgrade, but what do I do for say 500 systems, or more?

This tool can even update the system using a newer kernel package. I know
about updating all to well, as I wrote the article on implementing your own
FreeBSD Update Server, but could this be done the FreeBSD way with a tool
such as SpaceWalk, or another tool that we may be able to write.

I believe SpaceWalk could be crafted to handle FreeBSD from a package
point-of-view, and possibly other items such as remote commands, however is
SpaceWalk the right tool? Is there a tool out there that I am unaware of
that does this?

When I was upgrading systems at my previous position, we had to create a
tool internally that just monitored the kernel versions of the system, but
going to each system individually to upgrade was required.

Is there a tool that say a business may use for a "dashboard" view of their
infrastructure, and where they stand from a security and patch
point-of-view?

Many thanks!

-jgh

-- 
Jason Helfman          | FreeBSD Committer
jgh at FreeBSD.org     | http://people.freebsd.org/~jgh  | The Power to Serve