Flock 2024 Running Fedora Linux Workstation at Scale

Managing enterprise Linux mobile endpoints (usually laptops) at scale can be difficult using the existing tools made for managing Cloud and Server systems. While there are many commercial and open source tools available intended to manage Windows and MacOS mobile endpoints, there are very few for Linux mobile management. I've also discovered that managing a fleet of Linux laptops doesn't follow the traditional Linux management workflow. I will talk about issues my team has encountered, and how we have leveraged Ansible and cloud services to solve our problems.

We have seen great strides in usability and performance of many Linux distributions on modern laptop hardware, and there are benefits in using an Open Source operating system on company devices. However, Linux laptops often operate outside a locked-down managed network, and the devices still need to manage access, perform software updates, identify and address security issues, as well as self-repair. As more employees work from home, there is very little guarantee that the managed Linux device will be attached to a corporate network anymore, so we need to re-think how we apply a managed infrastructure to mobile Linux endpoints. We need to have the ability to apply automation, auditing and account management to remote endpoints in a secure manner, and not expose the internal company resources to the public internet. Ansible is a powerful tool used to manage systems at scale, but tools like Ansible Automation Platform tend to rely on a highly managed networking infrastructure. We will demonstrate how Ansible can still be used to manage Linux mobile endpoints.

This talk should explain what to consider when managing Linux workstations for remote or traveling employees. We will discuss some of the technology we used and how we are changing the way we manage Linux laptops. We'll also discuss some of the possible ways modern tools might make this easier in the future.

This talk was originally presented at Flock 2024 in Rochester, NY by Jonathan Billings.

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[linuxpirate]

Clicked this video because of the interesting topic but stayed for an old friend.