title: Distributed Application Command/Control and Monitoring
body: <p>I'm working on a distributed system which has several nodes and I would like to be able to enable remote command and status monitoring on them. I've been looking around for a good solution and found <a href="http://puppetlabs.com/puppet/related-projects/dashboard/" rel="nofollow">Puppet</a>, but it seems overly complicated and cumbersome. Is there anything more lightweight that allows command/control and monitoring?</p>
  
  <p>I need to be able to do the following things (at the very least): </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Issue commands to the distributed nodes (start, stop, etc). </li>
  <li>Show the status of the nodes within the system (up, down, throughput, errors, warnings, etc).</li>
  <li>It would also be good if it has a C++ API.</li>
  <li>A big plus would be if it has some sort of web interface.</li>
  <li>It's affordable (even free)?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I can build one in-house, but if there is something already available then it would save me some time.</p>