Alexandre Brianceau, CfgMgmtCamp 2019. Rudder is an open source configuration management tool that includes continuous auditing (with or without remediation), compliance info and graphs and the possibility to configure everything in the UI and/or APIs. It has been around for more than six years and has users large (think 10 000 nodes) and small around the world. Let’s take a moment to look at the vision that lead us here, how Rudder is different from similar tools, and what users find invaluable, nice (or annoying - I’ll be honest!). If you’re not familiar with Rudder this is a great talk to attend to get the basics covered.

1. rudder.io
+33 1 83 62 26 96
cs@rudder.io
What is Rudder and when
should we use it?
Alexandre Brianceau
Business Development Director
alexandre@rudder.io - +33 669 503 528

2. Configuration Management definition
2
Configuration management is a systems
engineering process for establishing and
maintaining consistency of a product [...]
throughout its life.
Configuration_management
“

3. Helpful strategy that could be harmful
3
Continuous
growth
Continuous
availability
Continuous
threat
→ automation
but what about consistency ?

4. Rudder ♡ devops & cie
devops
4
Culture
AutomationShare
Measurement

5. What are commons issues nowadays?
5
Guru team effect (sometimes SPOF)
No significant incident & TTR reduction
Not suitable for audit
Not applicable on the whole IT servers

6. Rudder
6
IT production infrastructure
automation and compliance
Based in Paris
Founded in 2010 “

7. Production actuelle des services IT
7
Business needs
Operating System
Versioned source code
Applicative binaries
Middleware
App App App
Server
Agile methodology
Continuous integration
Continuous deployment
Provisioning
RUNDEV
Installation
Configuration
Update
MOC

8. Architecture
8
Rudder Root Server
Interfaces
CLI
WEB UI
API
Users
Applications
Compliance Configuration Inventory
Rudder Engine + Plugins
Relay Node
Rudder Agent
Node
Rudder Agent
Node
Rudder Agent

9. Observability : compliant by design
PARAM
RULE
● Id
DIRECTIVE
● Id
● (Components)
GROUP
● Id
RUDDER config
(global)
● Policy Mode
● Schedule
● ...
NODE
● Properties
● Policy Mode
● Schedule
● ...
Environmental context
● Id : . . .
● Generated : . . .
Files
Node configuration
Historisation
Historisation
RUN
● Reports
● Reports
● ...
● ...
METADATA
● node id
● config id
● run timestamp
RUN
● Reports
● Reports
● ...
● ...
METADATA
● node id
● config id
● run timestamp
● Signature
Get config
Send configuration
reports
Expected reports
(node id, config id,
timestamp)
Run reports
Historisation
Compliance historised
Send expected reportsMetadata
● Integrity
● Signature
Config
● For Rule R,
Directive D1,
Component C
Event logs
Change request

10. Key Benefits
10
➡ Automation benefits by
default
➡ Criteria-based dynamic
groups
➡ Knowledge sustainability
➡ Platforms / OS agnostics
➡ Audit / Enforce switch
Efficiency
➡ Full visibility
➡ Automation accuracy
➡ Automatic server handling
➡ Ensure SLA with automatic
drift correction
Reliability
➡ Continuous audit
➡ Centralized and complete
compliance overview
➡ Configuration logging
➡ Observability design
Traceability

11. Sec
Production
Interns
OpsDev
Externals
remediation - root SSH restriction access
audit - sudoers / logs
validation workflow
Workflow example
DMZ
Compliance
reporting

12. Rudder, a team solution
12
Web UI API CLI / Code

13. Features IT production-oriented
13
Continuous verification with automatic remediation
Dynamic groups based on criterias (inventory or tag related)
Audit only or enforce your configuration in one click
Log all the activity and rollback to a previous configuration

14. Where & when should I use Rudder ?
14
Multi-systems Multi-platforms
Toutes échelles
10k +
Debian, RHEL, SUSE,... 2008R2 and upper 5.3 and upper physical or vm cloud / containers IOT
More than 10 000 nodes
managed by a single server
< 20 Mo of RAM,
≃ 10” exec
Relay components,
low network footprint

15. How to use ?
15
1.a) Technique usage : ready-to-use modules
Few examples :
- Users, groupes, passwords
- Softwares (deb/rpm/exe/msi)
- Configuration files
(complete, bloc, template, per ligne…)
- Services & processes management
(SysV, systemd, Windows…)
- Software configurations
(OpenSSH, Apache HTTPd, IIS, NFS…)

16. How to use ?
16
1.b) Use the graphical configuration editor
➔ Allows to create any configuration with
elementary bricks
➔ Possibility to link the bricks with conditions

17. How to use ?
17
2. Compliance verification

18. rudder.io
+33 1 83 62 26 96
cs@rudder.io
Thank you !
Any questions ?
Alexandre Brianceau
Customer Success Manager
alexandre@rudder.io - 06.69.50.35.28