Enterprise style Central Management Interface - {Now $1900}
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Removed my post that Sullrich responded to. Found my answer and would prefer not to " open a can of worms" ;D with my questions and or comments. I will only look for solutions which have the BSD license. End of story.
Mark
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The Dingo ate the GPL…. Dingo doesnt do anything GPL.....
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I was thinking about the design of such a management software. Don't you think that it would be nice if the "pfsense side" module was a package ? I mean, the central controller using php/mysql under freeBSD, communicating with the pfsense boxes through a package installed on each boxes we want to be centraly managed.
This package would be a simple collection of useful php functions in distributed/centraly managed environments (like a proxy to pfsense core system), using XML-RPC or simple get/post queries(I heard someone talking about REST…).I'm just talking about the design, not saying it's the way it should be done. What do you think about that ?
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IMO that has the advantage that it's not tied in to the base, which means that it's easier to upgrade the management interface functionality without worrying about keeping the base in step.
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I don't mind it being a package as long as it doesn't make it more difficult to apply and configure. I do have a concern regarding the involvement of SQL and would prefer some clarification on how that might be implemented. My idea of an appliance is a single box which can perform specific functions but have all of those functions built in since it would not be a firewall by definition. SQL connectivity which I would assume would be another package which would install and be able to automatically configured. By this I mean one would install the mySQL package or other BSD Licensed SQL product. When installing the CMI package it would auto-configure the SQL package or via the CMI gui one could configure it. Any feedback or insight on how this would be implemented would be appreciated. I like the idea of packages because after this is completed I will probably look for a network monitoring solution as a package which would allow me to monitor other products…ie services, applications or devices. Any solution which would be implemented should be easily configurable and not require advanced knowledge of SQL for example.
Mark
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I am curious what would be the best way to have the CMI communicate bi-directionally with the firewalls? One of the reasons I ask this is this solution opens the device to potentially allow other packages to interact with the firewalls..ie Network monitor. Considering that this is a possibilty I would think VPN connections between the appliance and the remote networks would allow any and all packages access to the remote locations. The only problem I have seen in the past with this is when either a customer is using the same internal subnet as I am using or 2 customers are using the same subnet. In the past I have used Cisco VPN Concentrators which would translate say my network of 192.168.1.0 to 172.20.10.0 to the customers 192.168.1.0 so the customer communicated via the 172 subnet and the concentrator receiving the packets would then convert them back to the 192 subnet. Small enviroments may not experience this but larger would. Sometimes asking a customer to use an entirely differnet subnet for there network is ok and sometimes not okay. Is there another way to allow other packages or services to communicate withremote firewalls with the same subnets? Maybe create vpn with an virtual interface on the remote loaction with a different subnet and then reroute that traffic back to the real internal subnet? Just an idea…maybe completely impossible? Better off buying a cisco vpn concentrator?
Mark
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I will put $50 to this bounty
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i have been looking at how Vmware Virtual Center manages their ESX servers, and they seem to use the following configurations:
the management server with vcenter and SQL (sql can be on a separate server if wanted)
the esx servers has OpenPegasus, a WBEM server, the Virtual Center Client pushes configurations to the ESX server OpenPegasus via CIM-XML over a SSL session (https?)Maybe OpenPegasus can be used for pfsense too?
http://www.openpegasus.org/page.tpl?ggid=799
"Pegasus is an open-source implementation of the DMTF CIM and WBEM standards. It is designed to be portable and highly modular. It is coded in C++ so that it effectively translates the object concepts of the CIM objects into a programming model but still retains the speed and efficiency of a compiled language. Pegasus is designed to be inherently portable and builds and runs today on most versionsof UNIX(R), Linux, OpenVMS, and Microsoft Windows."i'm really impressed on how Vmware's Virtual Center Client is managing multiple ESX servers, and would really like to see something similar for pfsense. (but thumbs down to vmware for not making it a multi-platform client :( )
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And in case someone wants to know about the licensing it uses the MIT license. ;D
http://www.openpegasus.org/license.tpl?CALLER=license.tpl
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I work a lot with ESX and Virtual Center and sure it is impressive. VI client is built with .NET and uses smart and cool controls built by vmware themselves. VI client uses SOAP to communicate to virtual center server which then uses CIM-XML to contact ESX hosts (service console is a redhat based vm).
That's why their "SDK" is very simple, it's nothing but the documentation of the SOAP webservice :-D. They also provide a pre built proxy for faster access (.net XML serialization/deserialization is damn too slow), so managing VC by code is easy.Their design is not so bad… perhaps too plateform dependant on the administrative side.
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Hi,
I'm fairly new to pfsense however I really like the idea of the CMI. I'd be more than willing to help with any PHP development of said application, I have quite alot of time to spare at the moment and can dedicate other resources to the project, hosting, test platforms etc.
If someone wants to go about the project then let me know.
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If someone wants to go about the project then let me know.
That is a good question. Dingo and several others have voiced interest in working on this bounty. Everyone seems to have posted their requirements. I do not know if one person will be taking this bounty or if it will be split between multiple devs. Mcrane, Juve and Dingo have expressed interest in this. Please correct me if I am wrong but Dingo asked for our final reqs which one might assume he is working on this. Some clarification would be nice. If someone could officially claim the bounty so I know that the money I budgeted isn't just sitting there.
As to helping you might want to ask Dingo, mcrane or Juve.
Mark
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I havent 100% jumped on this, Ive been watching the thread to see what others have as input, I have a game plan for a CMI and I am working on the technical aspects of the implementation. So Id consider it as still alive but I also dont want to duplicate efforts and end up with 2 different systems. Been quiet the past two days as Im deeply involved ina project for a client
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Hi,
I've been playing with backing up and restoring config files to pfsense using CURL today. And for anybody who decides to take on this bounty be aware that you need to force curl to use HTTP version 1.0 as lighttpd does not support curl posts properly without this.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_0);
Took me hours to figure out why it wasnt posting properly.
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I don't know which is better but I have been using sftp to back them up automatically. It will be interesting to see how this might be done via a CIM.
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Found this and it is pretty cool. Do not know regarding the license because it doesnt specify a specific one but describes its licensing instead. Also check out the demo…..
http://www.project-observer.org
http://demo.project-observer.org -
I just looked at http://www.project-observer.org as you suggested. Found the license it looks like a BSD style license. In the features it mentions "Aware of m0n0wall and pfSense SNMP limitations." that implies that it can talk to both m0n0wall and pfSense.
Very cool find. I'm definitely going to give it a try.
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So that means this is something which could en integrated? Would this compromise security for networks outside of the local network?
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To know how it could be integrated will first need to install it and see how it communicates with PFSense. Looking at the code may be useful as well. I should have time to do that on Monday or Tuesday.
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I also like the fact that it supports
Cisco CatOS devices
devices since my internal routers tend to be cisco for voice and data.
