Effective Configuration Management

The state of configuration management is arguably still in its infancy, and detailed info on how to effectively integrate these tools onto an existing site is scarce. Our aim is to describe the current best practices when installing a configuration management system. We will go over code review tools for version control backends and continuous integration systems in front. While we will cover some real-world examples, we are agnostic as to the choice of particular tools and CM systems, so all are welcome. The lessons learned are useful when building or maintaining an effective infrastructure that is orchestrated by configuration management.

N.J. Thomas is a Unix systems administrator for Amplify Education. He is currently focusing on evangelizing the benefits of installing configuration management everywhere. In his spare time he likes to play with BSD machines and configuration management systems. His research interests include creating effective command-line and curses-based tools for sysadmins.