Appendix: Glossary

Active Techniques
This is an organized list of the Techniques selected and modified by the user. By default this list is the same as the Technique Library. Techniques can be disabled or deleted, and then activated again with a simple drag and drop. Categories can be reorganised according to the desired taxonomy. A Technique can appear only once in the Active Techniques list.
Applied Policy
This is the result of the conversion of a Policy Instance into a set of CFEngine Promises for a particular Node.
cf-execd
This CFEngine Community daemon is launching the CFEngine Community Agent cf-agent every 5 minutes.
cf-serverd
This CFEngine Community daemon is listening on the network on Rudder Root and Relay servers, serving policies and files to Rudder Nodes.
CFEngine Enterprise
Managing Windows machines requires the commercial version of CFEngine, called Enterprise. It needs to open the port 5308 TCP from the Node to the Rudder Root Server.

This version used to be called Nova before.

CFEngine server
Distribute the CFEngine configuration to the nodes.
CFEngine
CFEngine is a configuration management software. CFEngine comes from a contraction of “ConFiguration Engine”.
Directive
This is an instance of a Technique, which allows to set values for the parameters of the latter. Each Directive can have a unique name. A Directive should be completed with a short and a long description, and a collection of parameters for the variables defined by the Technique.
Dynamic group
Group of Nodes based on search criteria. The search is replayed every time the group is queried. The list will always contain the nodes that match the criteria, even if the data nodes have changed since the group was created.
LDAP server
Store the inventories and the Node configurations.
Port 443, TCP, for nodes
WebDAV/HTTPS communication port, used to send inventory and fetch the id of the Rudder Server.
Port 443, TCP, for users
HTTP/S communication port, used to access the Rudder web interface.
Port 514, TCP/UDP
Syslog port, used to centralize reports.
Port 5308, TCP
CFEngine Enterprise communication port, which is required to manage Windows nodes.
Port 5309, TCP
CFEngine communication port, used to communicate the policies to the rudder nodes.
Port 5310, TCP
CFEngine communication port, used to communicate the policies to the Rudder nodes when debugging communication between a Node and a policy server with the rudder server debug command.
Port 80, TCP, for nodes
WebDAV/HTTP communication port, kept for compatibility with pre-3.1 nodes and AIX nodes.
Rudder Node
A Node is client computer managed by Rudder. To be managed, a Node must first be accepted as an authorized node.
Rudder Relay Server
Relay servers are an optional component in a Rudder architecture. They can act as a proxy for all network communications between Rudder agents and a Rudder server. This enables them to be installed in a remote datacenter, or inside a restricted network zone, to limit the network flows required to use Rudder.
Rudder Root Server
This is the core of the Rudder infrastructure. This server must be a dedicated machine (either virtual of physical), and contains the main application components: the web interface, databases, configuration data, logs…
Rudder
Rudder is a Drift Assessment software. Rudder associates Asset Management and Configuration Management. Rudder is a Free Software developed by Normation.
Rule
It is the application of one or more directives to a group of nodes. It is the glue between both Asset Management and Configuration Management parts of the application.
SQL server
Store the received reports from the nodes.
Static group
Group of Nodes based on search criteria. The search is performed once and the resulting list of Nodes is stored. Once declared, the list of nodes will not change, except manual change.
Technique Library
This is an organized list of all available Techniques. This list can’t be modified: every change made by a user will be applied to the Active Techniques.
Technique
This is a configuration skeleton, adapted to a function or a particular service (e.g. DNS resolver configuration). This skeleton includes the configuration logic for this function or service, and can be set according to a list of variables (in the same example: IP addresses of DNS servers, the default search box, …)
Web server application
Execute the web interface and the server that handles the new inventories.
Web server front-end
Handle the connection to the Web interface, the received inventories and the sharing of the UUID Rudder Root Server.