Tentakel has the following features:

• Parallel execution of commands on several hosts.
• Format strings that control how the output of the remote commands is about to be displayed and how the output of different hosts should be separated from each other.
• A powerful configuration file that can be used to define groups of hosts. Such groups can contain other groups. Each group can be assigned a remote method, a username and a format string.
• Easy extensibility to allow for different remote methods (currently only ssh and rsh are supported).

It does not try to be a complex Distributed Resource Management System (DRM) like the Sun Grid Engine or Condor. Tentakel aims to be useful mainly for administration purposes.

For more background see the motivation document.