The problem :
Them work of mantain a bunch of linux servers is hard … when you have 1 or 2 is easy to mantain it, but when the number of servers grows to 10 or more , and when each one need a monthly maintenance (upgrade packages, install new applications, …) the problem is BIGGER …
At the moment i could not find any solution to this problem. Beacause of that i am starting to develop a group of applications to manage these problem
the solution / the application
The application must be on java (to port to another operating systems if needed) there must be a number of clients for every server you must mantain and a server (or 2 for data reduntant) .
The java clients must send data (UDP i think) every minuto or so with status information (ENCRIPTED i think), a java client console on a desktop
must connect to the server and can view all information from the administrator servers.
At the first phase of the project the only purpose is to view data (like on snmp) on the servers distributed, from a java client (or browser maybe)
The second state must be to interact with these servers remotely and at the same time on groups of any number of servers (for ex. reboot all, od change data on all or install package A on all at the same time). These operation will need a password obviously.
In the next days i start these proyect on Sourceforge and ALL cooperations will be welcome.