Synapse - An open source solution to remotely manage a large number of hosts


10/09/2012 - Raphaël De Giusti (@raphdg)

An important part of the ComodIT infrastructure is the comodit-agent: a small software application installed on the provisioned server and used to manage its resources during its lifetime. This agent has been developed in collaboration with CECOTEPE , a research center in Liège. Today we are happy to announce that they are releasing it as an open source project, under an MIT License and the name Synapse.

In a nutshell, Synapse enables you to remotely manage resources (files, packages , services, users, etc…) on a very large number of hosts. It brings together features of Configuration Management and Orchestration in a lightweight framework. Written in Python and using AMQP for messaging between the nodes.

The key features of synapse are:

  • REST API: manipulate resources (packages, files, services, …) instead of executing commands
  • OS abstraction: abstract the definition of resources so you can focus on the what, not the how
  • Fine grained access control: restrict user access at the resource level
  • Pluggable engine: manage any kind of resources on the remote hosts with custom plugins
  • Lightweight: easy to deploy, small memory footprint
  • Flexible: reach nodes without knowing their ip or hostname, filter requests by hostname, ip, platform

The synapse web page provides you more details, examples and tutorials. Below is a short screencast showing a few of the synapse features in action. Do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have questions or comments.

Raphaël De Giusti
Lead developer for Synapse
Research Engineer at CECOTEPE


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