Collins introductory usecase

[Srinivas Dharmasanam]

Hi,
I'm evaluating the use of collins as a CMDB for use in maintaining configuration information (sw versions, hardware information, etc.) for various components in an appliance (including hardware and software).

Currently its being done with some config dump files that is manual and error-prone.

I went through the collins install, and am able to run the demo on a docker container on box here.

A few additional questions below. Please do send me any related material that would be useful.

1. Its important for us to be able to find a delta or config diff between 2 sets of such config information. Example, I enter all the info for a particular release and want to compare that with the next release. Can you please clarify how I could do this?

2. Given a delta config, I would like to automate the application of a specific config. Example say we require a bunch of rpms installed. How can I accomplish this?

Thanks much in advance.

[Will Richard]

Hi Srinivas,

Collins is not terribly great at giving you diffs between changes.

What we do is use collins as the data store, and then generate the real configs based on that.  For example, in many places at Tumblr, we will gather information from collins in an automated fashion, template a configuration file with that information, and then automatically commit that configuration file to git.  This will give you a diff of when information has changed.

In this situation, really think of collins as your data store, and you build automation to fit your needs around it - when the data changes, the automation should do the right thing and give you the outputs you need.

I hope that helps,

-William Richard

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