DevOps Intermediate

What is Configuration Management?

The practice of systematically managing and maintaining consistent server configurations across infrastructure.

Configuration management ensures all servers in an environment are configured identically and consistently. Tools automate installing packages, managing files, setting up services, and applying security policies across hundreds of servers.

Popular tools include Ansible (agentless, YAML playbooks), Puppet (agent-based, declarative), Chef (agent-based, Ruby DSL), and Salt (fast, Python-based). These tools are idempotent — running the same configuration twice produces the same result.

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