Need an OpenSource Self Hosted Lab Management System

Computer Hardware & Server Infrastructure Builds
1

Hi There, I hope everyone is doing well.

Is there any suggestion on any opensource self-hosted software (preferably that can be access via web browser) that I can host on the Linux server for managing all the computers in the lab (A school computer lab of around 30 computers). Things that I needed to accomplished are the following:

  1. Remote Shutdown Any Computer or all at once.
  2. Update software on all computers all at once.
  3. Status of the Computer (Online/Offline)
  4. Status of the Computer Hardware especially SMART Status of HDD)
  5. Install/Remove a particular software on any specific computer.
  6. Change the configuration on any particular computer or all the computers at once.

Any suggestions will be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your kindness and your help in trying to figure out the solution.

2

I would suggest Ansible as it can be used to control many systems at once.

2 Likes
3

I never come across this video before, The software looks promising. But is there anything with GUI?

4

Tom- Great minds think a like. Big fan of your Youtube channel. First time on your forums. Going to be incorporating a lot of the technologies you talk about in my open source lab, but that’s a different topic. Looking at the post I was thinking the same thing with Ansible to fit this use case.
OP - If you’re looking for a GUI, you might want to consider Ansible Tower. I believe it’s not free, but you may get some savings potentially in the education sector. Otherwise, AWX might be something to research as well. I’m a big fan of Ansible and hoping to experiment with it myself in my lab.

5

Thanks you for your suggestions. It seem like I have to try Ansible only.

6

That would be my recommendation. In the same configuration management/automation space are Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack, too. You could give those a try as well. Chef and Puppet are agent-based in their open source offerings, and SaltStack is agentless like Ansible in its connection/control mechanism. They might be worth a look as well. I’m more of a fan of Ansible myself, as I’m more familiar with it, and it seems like it would be able to fit well in this circumstance.