Which open source configuration management tool should I use?

Resources for choosing a configuration management tool:

• “Getting Started with Configuration Management”

  Cory Lueninghoener. ;login:, Apr 2011.

  “Configuration management tools take time to set up and maintain, but using one is well worth the effort. In this article I will present technical and social problems, solutions and advice related to getting started with a configuration management tool.” C.L.

• “Configuration Management Summit”

  Aleksey Tsalolikhin. ;login:, Oct 2010.

  Conference report summary from the First Configuration Management Summit, with a concise overview of Bcfg2, CFEngine, Chef and Puppet, as well as the relative strengths and weaknesses of each.

• Configuration Management Summit, full version

  Aleksey Tsalolikhin. www.verticalsysadmin.com, 9 July 2010.

  Full report on the first Configuration Management Summit, including more details on each tool.

• “A Survey of System Configuration Tools”

  Thomas Delaet, et al. LISA 2010.

  Presents a framework for comparing Configuration Management tools to help you select the tool right for your environment and needs. See especially Section 4.1, “How do I choose a tool for my environment?”

• Comparison of Open Source Configuration Management Software

  Wikipedia.org

  There are a lot of choices out there, this article has tables summarizing characteristics of each.

• “Puppet and CFEngine compared: time and resource consumption”

  Jarle Bjoergeengen. ;login:, Feb 2010.

  Demonstrates CFEngine runs considerably faster than Puppet and uses less resources. Note: James Turnbull of Puppet Labs commented on Twitter in Sep 2011: “Very old version of #puppet being tested. Not sure how valid the #benchmarks are.” Perhaps somebody would like to re-test using current stable versions.

• “Relative Origin of CFEngine, Puppet and Chef”

  Aleksey Tsalolikhin. www.verticalsysadmin.com, Sep 2010.

  There are many configuration management tools out there. Here’s how three of them (CFEngine 3, Puppet and Chef) relate to each other in terms of origin. However, each tool is unique and has it’s own strengths and life.

• Why we use Cfengine: memory footprint

  Normation Blog, Feb 2011.

  “Running [CFEngine agent] manually we see its memory consumption peaking at 10 megabytes of RAM, with a total runtime of roughly 1.5 seconds.”

• Why we use Cfengine: file editing

  Normation Blog, Mar 2011.

  Demonstrates flexibility and versatility of file editing in CFEngine 3.

• What Is Chef? and Why Chef?

  Chef Wiki

• A Visual Introduction to Chef

  Kate Leroux, Sep 2011.

Comments and additions welcome! Please email me.

Best, Aleksey