Otter helps you provision and configure your servers automatically, without ever needing to log-in to a command prompt.
A server can be physical (bare metal), virtual, or even nonexistent (i.e. one that you will provision later).
You can add a server using the web-based user interface (Servers > Add Server), or programmatically with the infrastructure API.
Otter communicates with servers using the Inedo Agent (for Windows) or SSH/SFTP (for Windows and Linux).
Once a server has been added, you can begin provisioning and configuring the server by describing the packages, settings, files, and anything else that your server requires. This is accomplished by creating a configuration plan that describes the desired state of configuration and the specific steps needed to ensure that state.
For example, you would use Ensure-AppPool to describe and provision an Application Pool in IIS, along with any number of the three dozen settings application pools can have.
You can create a configuration plan for an individual server, or use a role to share configuration plans across any number of servers.
Otter continuously monitors you servers for configuration changes, and reports when there's configuration drift. You can set servers to automatically remediate drift, or schedule remediation and other configuration changes as needed.
Configuration drift is when a server's actual configuration is different than the desired configuration. It can occur expectedly (if you change the configuration plan), or unexpectedly (someone manually made a change on the server).
Each server can be configured to manage configuration drift differently, through one of these options:
Otter will also collect information about the packages (such as Universal, Chocolatey, PowerShell, etc.) that are installed on any given server. This means you don't have to log in to each server to view the current configuration and installed packages.
To configure a server package collection, go to the Packages tab on the server's overview pages, and click the configure button. You will be prompted for which types of packages to collect:
When configured, Otter will regularly collect information about installed packages and display it in an easy-to-read report.
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