Rudder (software) explained

Rudder
Author:	Normation
Developer:	Normation
Programming Language:	Scala (server), Rust (server) and C (agent)
Operating System:	Unix-like, Microsoft Windows, Android
Genre:	Configuration management, system administration, network management, cloud management, continuous delivery, DevOps
License:	GNU General Public License

Rudder is an open source audit and configuration management utility to help automate system configuration across large IT infrastructures. Rudder relies on a lightweight local agent installed on each managed machine.

Rudder is produced by Normation,^[1] founded in 2010. Its server-side web interface is written in Scala and its local agent is written in C, and are published as free software under the GNU General Public License 3.0.^[2]

Features

• Host inventory
• Feature-complete Web interface
• Standardized, reusable policies
• Custom Policy editor
• Central reporting and historic information for policy applied to hosts
• Grouping based on search queries run against inventory
• Automatic updating of such groups (dynamic groups)
• Dynamic generation of per-host policies (lessens risk of data leaks from shared policy)
• Change Request / Validation
• REST API
• Git backend

History

Rudder was created by the founding team of Normation and first released as free software in October 2011.^[3]

Rudder 3.0 was released in February 2015.^[4]

Platform support

The following operating systems are supported as a Root server:

• Debian Linux 9 and 10
• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) / CentOS 7 and 8
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12 et 15

The following operating systems are supported for Rudder Nodes and packages are available for these platforms:

• Debian Linux 5 to 10
• Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) / CentOS 3 to 8
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 to 15
• IBM AIX 5 to 7
• Slackware 14
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008R2 or higher

See also

• CFEngine
• Ansible (software)
• Bcfg2
• Chef (software)
• Puppet (software)
• Salt (software)
• Comparison of open source configuration management software
• DevOps
• Otter (software)

External links

• Official website

Notes and References

1. Web site: Rudder FAQ. Rudder. 12 June 2015.
2. Web site: Rudder FAQ. 12 June 2015.
3. Web site: Rudder 2.3 release notes. Rudder. 12 June 2015.
4. Web site: Rudder 3.0 release notes. Rudder. 12 June 2015.