[kwlug-disc] Centralized configuration tools

[Paul Nijjar]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 11:14:58AM -0500, Eric Gerlach wrote:
> cfengine: ugly, old, not declarative.
> bcfg2: XML, no community.
> puppet: A bit slow, sometimes unintuitive.
> 
> Another one: chef.  Chef is like puppet but procedural, not declarative.

Neat. I still don't understand the configuration management wars, but
this looks like a contender. Capistrano also sounds interesting. At
this point I am not sure what I want, even. 

I think your analyses are pretty helpful, though. 

> I'm really liking working with Puppet.  It's taken a long time to get it
> integrated into our environment (one year and we're not done yet), and
> getting something deployed takes 2-5x as long, but once it's out there
> it's easy to manage and we can redo it in seconds if we have to.

Do you find that the extra cost to deploy is worth the hassle? 
What is the tipping point? Is it worth it to add a few configuration
items (local apt sources, configuration files for LDAP logins) on a
few Linux servers? 

> I was thinking about possibly giving a talk on Puppet sometime after my
> installation talk, now that we're full through August I could consider
> adding myself for about a year from now :-)

I'm claiming my Fifth Amendment rights on this comment, but October is
open. I can slot you in if you would like. 

- Paul (also ugly, old, and not declarative)