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Landscape lets you group multiple computers by applying tags to them. You can group computers using any set of characteristics; architecture and location might be two logical tagging schemes. Tag names may use any combination of letters, numbers, and dashes. Each computer can be associated with multiple tags. There is no menu choice for tags; rather, you can select multiple computers under the menu and apply or remove one or more tags to all the ones you select on the screen. If you want to specify more than one tag at a time for your selected computers, separate the tags by spaces.
In Linux, a package is a group of related files for an application that make it easy to install, upgrade, and remove the application. You can manage packages from the menu under .
Linux distributions like Ubuntu use repositories to hold packages you can install on managed computers. While Ubuntu has several repositories that anyone can access, you can also maintain your own repositories on your network. This can be useful when you want to maintain packages with different versions from those in the community repositories, or if you've packages in-house software for installation. Landscape's 12.09 release notes contain a quick tutorial about repository management.
An upgrade profile defines a schedule for the times when upgrades are to be automatically installed on the machines associated with a specific access group. You can associate zero or more computers with each upgrade profile via tags to install packages on those computers. You can also associate an upgrade profile with an access group, which limits its use to only computers within the specified access group. You can manage upgrade profiles from the UPGRADE PROFILES link in the choice under your account.
A package profile, or meta-package, comprises a set of one or more packages, including their dependencies and conflicts (generally called constraints), that you can manage as a group. Package profiles specify sets of packages that associated systems should always get, or never get. You can associate zero or more computers with each package profile via tags to install packages on those computers. You can also associate a package profile with an access group, which limits its use to only computers within the specified access group. You can manage package profiles from the Package Profiles link in the menu under your account.
A removal profile defines a maximum number of days that a computer can go without exchanging data with the Landscape server before it is automatically removed. If more days pass than the profile's "Days without exchange", that computer will automatically be removed and the license seat it held will be released. This helps Landscape keep license seats open and ensure Landscape is not tracking stale or retired computer data for long periods of time. You can associate zero or more computers with each removal profile via tags to ensure those computers are governed by this removal profile. You can also associate a removal profile with an access group, which limits its use to only computers within the specified access group. You can manage removal profiles from the REMOVAL PROFILES link in the choice under your account.
Landscape lets you run scripts on the computers you manage in your account. The scripts may be in any language, as long as an interpreter for that language is present on the computers on which they are to run. You can maintain a library of scripts for common tasks. You can manage scripts from the menu under your account, and run them against computers from the menu under .
Administrators are people who are authorized to manage computers using Landscape. You can manage administrators from the menu under your account.
Landscape lets administrators limit administrative rights on computers by assigning them to logical groupings called access groups. Each computer can be in only one access group. Typical access groups might be constucted around organisational units or departments, locations, or hardware architecture. You can manage access groups from the menu under your account; read about how to create access groups, add computers to access groups, and associate administrators with access groups. It is good policy to come up with and document a naming convention for access groups before you deploy Landscape, so that all administrators understand what constitutes an acceptable logical grouping for your organisation.
