Configuration Tools: Working Together

Since the LISA conferences began, the character of a typical "large installation" has changed greatly. Most large sites tended to consist of a comparatively small number of hand-crafted "servers" supporting a larger number of very similar "clients" (which would usually be configured with the aid of some automatic tool). A modern large site involves a more complex mesh of services, often with demanding requirements for completely automatic reconfiguration of entire services to provide fault-tolerance. As these changes have happened however, the tools available to provide configuration management for a site have not evolved to keep pace with these new challenges. This paper looks at some of the reasons why configuration tools have failed to move forward, and presents some suggestions for enabling the state of the art to advance.