Welcome

Background

Robust, enterprise-grade computing is typically only available to those with deep pockets, lots of floor space, armies of technicians, loads of vendor support, tons of patience, and a fair dose of good luck. 

Departmental level computing is typically easy to setup, but lacks the robustness of enterprise-grade computing data centers.

Meta-center aims to bridge the gap by providing a complete "enterprise-grade" data center in a form factor than can be operated on a single server and a fair dose of virtualization magic. With meta-center you can operate multiple servers within multiple isolated networks all on one box *and* you don't need to sacrifice your love of good management, security, remote control, and monitoring tools that every good enterprise data center would have.

What You Get (Planned Set of Features)

• Pre-architected and packaged solution for providing core data center functions on a single box.
  
• Complete utilize open source "best-of-breed" software packages for basic networking and management functions.
  
• CentOS 5 Host Operating System on the host node
  
• "IP tables"-based firewall configuration tool with support for virtually unlimited backend networks including any number of DMZ and Trusted VLANs.
  
• Pre-configured backend VLAN networks setup with multiple security boundaries in mind, as follows:
  
• (1) Untrusted (DMZ) Shared network
  
• (4) Untrusted (DMZ) Dedicated networks
  
• (1) Trusted Shared network
  
• (4) Trusted Dedicated networks
  
• (1) Dirty / Sandbox network
  
• (1) Management and (2) VPN networks (i.e. Admin and User pools)
  
• VMware Server configured with VMNet adaptors bridged to all backend VLANs
• Basic networking services pre-installed and pre-configured in management guest nodes:
  
• Authoritative and Forwarding DNS Server
• DHCP services for each VLAN
  
• OpenVPN solution with pre-configured admin and user pools
  
• SMTP mail relay services for each VLAN
  
• Time Services for each VLAN
  
• SNMP Infrastructure
• Security, Monitoring, Performance tools
• OpenLDAP User Account Management Tools
  
• Zenoss Monitoring and Administration Tools
  
• Host Intrusion Detection (HID) via OSSEC
• Network Intrusion Detection (NID) via Port Security Attack Detector (PSAD)
  
• Management Tools
• PKI-enabled SSH remote shells
  
• SSH-enabled VNC remote access to Linux nodes 
• VMware console
• VMware web-mased Management User Interface (MUI)
• VPN Admin Pool for Expanded Port-Level Access to  All O/S'es
• Webmin
• Pre-Installed Applications / Virtual Systems
  
• Apache reverse proxying web firewall (using ModSecurity)
  
• Plone Content Management System with online guides and tutorials for managing this stuff
• WebDAV access to the CMS to enable easy document sharing
  
• Subversion Source Code Management System setup and ready to manage your projects
• Bacula backup system for nightly backups of Windows, Linux, or Mac systems operated within the Meta-Center. All VMs and host node will be setup to backup nightly. You can expand to include other systems as you see fit.
• OpenLDAP GOSa Web-Based User Account Management Tools
  

What You Don't Get (Planned Set of Non-Features)

• Hardware.
  You need to bring that yourself; this is just a software solution. The good news is meta-center works on both shiny new hardware and hardware you can find cheaply on eBay.
  
  
• The ability to choose your own favorite packages for "xyz" core data center function.
  We've already decided what to architect around. This is not to say that you couldn't substitute in some other HID or DHCP solution -- or even your hardware firewall appliance. You just need to do that on your own nickel and adapt the meta-center appropriately.
  
  
• High cost to entry.
  Basically there are no software licensing costs, so if you have some old hardware laying around then put it to good use as a shiny new data center, then super!
  
  
• Lots of vendors and subcontractors to make this all happen.
  You really can setup this solution with a small team (even a team of one can run this).
  
  
• Headaches from having to figure all this technology out.
  We did that already.