What is your favorite Configuration Management Tool?

--jeremy

HAHA! I guess I am getting old now! I do not even recognize ANY of the choices!

Bash/Vim are my favorites!

How about Virtualmin?

Virtualmin is not a configuration management tool (at least in the context of the products listed) and therefore would not be a suitable entry in this category.

--jeremy

for me the this question has no any meaning at all. I work in a CM group (yes, config manager) for almost 20 years and none of these tools were even mentioned. In our world everything can be configured (just wait a few years and even your chairs/desks will have config files), so (to be short) every system has its own config and management system, and for every system the best choice is its own management software.

There seems to be some confusion about what CM is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_management has a pretty good definition. If you manage a large (or even medium) number of systems and are not using some kind of CM, be it custom rolled or a 3rd part product, you're doing yourself a disservice IMHO.

--jeremy

In that context, I use roll-your-own which is a (fairly extensive but maintained) combination of central, distributable config file templates, notes/methods/scripts and relational database records.

Could Roll-your-own be added in some form?

No, I think you misunderstood. I managed - earlier - 40 hosts (or even more) in the same time. It was a whole system producing a specific kind of software. Our system was running on HP-UX, Solaris, other unix variants and sometimes on linux and MS Windows too. We had definitely a common CM system to work with it, but we never managed the hosts/boxes themselves - that was out of the scope. Yes, there was a team who managed the base OS, the installed softwares and HW related problems on those boxes (but actually that was made by another company).
At this moment I work on/with several hundreds of virtual hosts, and those are still managed by others, I'm sill working in a CM group which will configure/build/manage/test the software what we produce. And I do not really care about the OS I use.

I think your original question has a restriction: What is your favorite Configuration Management Tool of linux/os itself? And the answer is still the same: the one which was delivered with the software you want to configure. Do you think it is a disservice?

pan64, in your particular case these tools are more aimed at the team in charged of the OS and installed software.

--jeremy

I'm open to feedback on this.

--jeremy

I think the difficulty with a "Roll-your-own" in addition to those who do actually maintain and use a somewhat comprehensive set of data and methods for the purpose (presumably the desired targets), this would also attract entries from many who have simply changed the entries in resolv.conf at some time (everyone else).

Assuming those who actually perform the functions on their systems to be the target (your intent may be different), perhaps "Custom methods" or "In-house methods" would be more on target? In which case an additional "Configuration not managed" or "None" option might catch all others.

Vagrant is not a configuration management tool.
More like VM management for configuration management Vagrant allows you to:

- Roll your own with bash scripts.
- Chef
- Puppet
- something last that i cant remember right now

+1 I don't think vagrant belongs in this list/category either.

Used Chef a lot this past year. And it's come a ways performance/scale wise with the engine rewite in Erlang. New Chef 12 gui is also nice. However, it is also now a premium feature (unless <= 25 nodes). Chef marketroids tried passing this off as now just one chef, fully open sourced, etc. b/s, but the community doesn't seem to have bought it and most are sticking with Chef-11.

So... I'm voting for real FOSS, SaltStack. Again. Even though I didn't get to use it at all this past year.

Never heard of any of these. My preferred configuration tool is a little program called "vi".