Following five years of research and development under the technical direction of its long-time author Mark Burgess (a professor of Network and System Administration at Oslo University College), the recently formed support company Cfengine AS has released a major upgrade of the Open Source, self-repairing software cfengine based on its innovative Promise Theory technology.
Unlike would-be alternatives, cfengine is not about producing alarms and reports to notify about errors and misalignments in the Data Center: It is a fully self-repairing maintenance engine capable of fixing them without human intervention. Cfengine users know that systems are compliant and maintained even when humans are unavailable, because they have made all the important decisions in advance.
With probably a million existing cfengine installations already worldwide, this major upgrade will have a big impact in improving data center operations at some of the largest data centers in the world, says CEO Thomas Ryd.
Cfengine has always been at the leading edge of research in its field and one of the important innovations in the new release is integrated knowledge management. As a tool that separates human decisions from machine implementation, cfengine historically freed humans from manual labour to indulge in proactive decision-making and strategic planning - something that relies on clear enterprise knowledge. Cfengine 3 now integrates a knowledge engine based on ISO standard Topic Maps making it easier than ever to follow the strategic intentions behind data centers operations. Cfengine ties IT and business-processes together in a way many companies and compliance-auditors will find powerful and appealing, CEO Thomas Ryd continues.
Cfengine is not a quaint dashboard for users - it is a powerful engine for datacenter engineers. Version 3 introduces a new language to the trusted technology, with a simpler syntax and sophisticated pattern description features. It brings technology to manage the essential large scale infrastructure and resource clouds of the next decade.
Cfengine 3 will work side-by-side with existing versions of cfengine to provide a minimum-disruption, incremental upgrade path to existing users. Gradual adoption has always been the cornerstone of cfengine's success, setting it apart from alternative disruptive roll-out systems. While other solutions require weeks or months of training with downtime and a major impact on existing infrastructure and applications, Cfengine works unobtrusively behind the scenes, according to Mark Burgess.
