Opsi (open PC server integration) is a software distribution and management system for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

clients, based on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

servers. Opsi is developed and maintained by uib GmbH from

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. The main parts of Opsi are

open-source license Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative ...

d under the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the ''Affero General Public License'' (non-GNU). It is intended fo ...

Features

The key features of opsi are: * Automated operating system installation (OS deployment) * Software distribution * Patch management * Inventory (hardware and software) * License Management / Software Asset Management * Support of multiple locations A tool for automated installations is important and necessary for standardization, maintainability and cost saving of larger PC networks. Opsi supports the client operating systems MS

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

, Server 2003,

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

, Server 2008,

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

, Server 2008R2, Server 2012,

Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pr ...

, Server 2012 R12 and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

. The 32- and the 64-bit versions are supported. For the installation of an opsi-server there are packages available for the Linux distributions

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

, SLES,

Univention Corporate Server Univention Corporate Server (UCS) is a server operating system derived from Debian with an integrated management system for the central and cross-platform administration of servers, services, clients, desktops and users as well as virtualized comp ...

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

RHEL Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. Fedora Linux and CentOS St ...

and

OpenSuse openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

Automated operating system installation

Via management interface a client may be selected for OS-Installation. If the client boots via

PXE PXE may refer to: Science and technology * Pentium Extreme Edition, a variant of the Pentium D microprocessor * Preboot Execution Environment, booting computers via a network * Pseudoxanthoma elasticum, a genetic disease Other uses * Proof and Exp ...

it loads a

boot image A boot image is a type of disk image that when on a boot device allows the associated computer to Booting, boot. A boot image usually includes an operating system, utilities, diagnostics, boot and data recovery information and applications used ...

from the opsi-depotserver. This bootimage prepares the hard disk, copies the required installation files, drivers and the opsi client agent and starts finally an unattended OS-Installation. Opsi uses the automatic detection of the necessary drivers for PCI-, HD-Audio- and USB-Devices. OS-installation via

Disk image A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device. Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...

is also supported.

Software distribution

For the automatic software distribution some software, the opsi-client-agent, has to be installed on each client. Every time the client boots the opsi-client-agent connects to the opsi-server and asks if there is anything to install (default). If this shall be done a script driven installation program (opsi-winst) starts and installs the required software on the client. During the installation process the user login can be blocked for integrity reasons. To integrate a new software packet into the software deployment system, a script must be written to specify the installation process. This script provides all the information on how this software packet has to be installed silent or unattended or by using tools like

AutoIt AutoIt is a freeware programming language for Microsoft Windows. In its earliest release, it was primarily intended to create automation scripts (sometimes called macros) for Microsoft Windows programs but has since grown to include enhancement ...

Autohotkey AutoHotkey is a free and open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows, primarily designed to provide easy keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys, fast macro-creation and software automation to allow users of most computer skill levels to ...

. With the opsi-winst steps like copy files or edit the registry can be done. The opsi-client-agent can also be triggered by other events or via push-installation from the opsi-server.

Patch-Management

The mechanism of the software deployment can also be used to deploy software patches and

hotfix A hotfix is a software update that is released outside the normal update cycle or intended to be applied to a live system; often to fix a bug. Originally, ''hotfix'' referred to patching a ''hot'' system a production server that is actively ser ...

es.

Inventory (hardware and software)

The hardware and software inventory also uses the opsi-client-agent. The hardware information is collected via calls to WMI while the software information is gathered from the registry. The inventory data are sent back to the opsi-server by a

web service A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

. The inventory data may imported via a web service to a CMDB e.g. in

OTRS OTRS (originally Open-Source Ticket Request System) is a service management suite. The suite contains an agent portal, admin dashboard and customer portal. In the agent portal, teams process tickets and requests from customers (internal or ext ...

License management / Software Asset Management

The opsi License Management module supports the administration of different kinds of licenses like Retail, OEM and Volume licenses. It counts the licenses that are used with the

software deployment Software deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use. Deployment can involve activities on the producer (software developer) side or on the consumer ( user) side or both. Deployment to consumers is a hard t ...

. Using the combination of the License Management and the software inventory, Software Asset Management reports on the number of free and installed licenses can be generated. The License Management module is part of a Co-funding Project and not released as open source yet.

Support of multiple locations

The software to be installed can be deposited bandwidth saving on several depot server. The configuration data can be stored and edited on one single server.

opsi-server

The opsi-server provides the following services: * The configuration-server stores the configuration data of the clients and provides the methods to manage these data via a web service or the command-line. The data can be stored in files, in

OpenLDAP OpenLDAP is a free, open-source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) developed by the OpenLDAP Project. It is released under its own BSD-style license called the OpenLDAP Public License. LDAP is a platform-independ ...

or in a

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

Database. * The depot-server stores software packages that may be installed on the clients. To provide support for multiple locations, multiple depot-servers may be controlled by one configuration-server. * A

TFTP The Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is a simple Lockstep (computing), lockstep communication protocol for transmitting or receiving files in a client-server application. A primary use of TFTP is in the early stages of nodes booting on a l ...

-Server provides the

s for the OS-Installations. * A

DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a clie ...

-Server may be integrated in the opsi-server.

Management interface

For managing opsi a graphical user interface is available as an application or as a browser

Applet In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in. The term is frequently used to refer to a Java applet, a program ...

. Management is also possible with a command line tool or via

License

The opsi core features are

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

according to the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

Version 3 and are free of charge. The core features are software distribution (or

), OS deployment and hard- and software-inventory. These free components can be supplemented with

closed source Proprietary software is software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modi ...

add-ons that require the payment of a fee. They are called Co-funding Projects.

Co-funding projects

Even though opsi is open source, there are some components which are not for free at the moment. These components are developed in a co-funding project. This means, that these parts are only available for those customers who paid a contribution to the cost of development. As soon as the development of a co-funding project is refinanced, the component will be part of the free opsi-version and can be used free of charge. It will be open source (as long as not prevented caused by technical reasons). The first of these co-funding Projects was the opsi support for

. It was completed on 1 February 2008 and is free of charge since 1 March 2010. The source code was divided from the not yet paid parts and is open source since 30 November 2010. At the moment (January 2011) there are three co-funding projects: Treeview builds hierarchical groups of clients to manage;

as backend for all data; and the license management module. The main focus of co-funding projects is to create software once for a pool of purchasers who share the cost and make it open source as soon as it paid in full..

References and sources

External links

* * {{Citation , url = http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2009/108/Opsi , contribution = Opsi , title = Linux Magazine , year = 2009 , issue = 108 Free software distributions Free network management software Configuration management Free software programmed in Python Software using the GNU Affero General Public License