Which Configuration Management Tool Is Right For You Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, Microsofts Power. Shell DSC, Cobbler and CFEngine are all good options when choosing a configuration management tool. Here are some key points of each of these products. What Is Configuration Management. Configuration management is one of todays most popular buzzwords. But like many of these terms you hear thrown around in meetings, you may not know exactly what it means. In short, configuration management deals with maintaining the hardware and software of a business. It involves making a detailed recording of the information about the computer system and updating it as needed. Open Source Web-Based Active Directory Management Tool' title='Open Source Web-Based Active Directory Management Tool' />This includes listing all of the installed software, the network addresses of the computers, and the configuration of different pieces of hardware. It also means creating updates or ideal models that can be used to quickly update computers or restore them to a predefined baseline. Configuration management software makes it easy for a system administrator to see what programs are installed and when upgrades might be necessary. For example, if a user needs to run certain programs that are incompatible with the newest operating system, the system administrator would note this when looking at the record for that users computer, and hed know not to upgrade the OS. MORE Intro To Configuration Management Benefits of CMMORE Building A Business Case For Automation And Orchestration. With so many configuration management products out there, its hard to know which is the best for your business. To help you, we put together a list of some of the major configuration management software solutions on the market. Well take a look at their main features and cover the types of companies that would benefit the most from them. Chef. Chef is available as a free open source product and a paid enterprise subscription. Its written in Ruby, and those who know this programming language can easily customize Chef to their needs. It has more than 8. Installation is quick and easy, and it includes a number of features, such as text based search and support for multiple environments. Its command line interface, testing mode, and large database make it ideal for companies that need to store records for a large number of computers, or that have some unique needs. Directory Manager is a customizable Webbased utility that allows a designated user or users to update Active Directory user and contact information. Not sure which tools belong in your open source server toolkit Here are 10 solid goto tools to get you started. October 13, 2017. Now You Can Order Food with Facebook Were taking the time out of finding what you want to eat by officially launching the ability to order food. Open Source Web-Based Active Directory Management Tool' title='Open Source Web-Based Active Directory Management Tool' />The capability to install or even create different modules makes this one of the most customizable configuration management options. Puppet. Puppet started out as a Dev. Ops tool, but has become popular as a configuration management tool as well. Much like Chef, its also written in Ruby and available in both free open source and paid enterprise versions. While Chef has a number of different features that are available for free, Puppets main features are in its paid enterprise version. Companies that dont need a whole lot of features can probably survive with the open source version, especially if they have someone with strong Ruby programming skills. Latest trending topics being covered on ZDNet including Reviews, Tech Industry, Security, Hardware, Apple, and Windows. Microsoft to integrate Visual Studio with AI services. Another piece of Microsofts Open Mind Studio falls into place A new extension enabling developers to use AI. This information is obsolete. You are looking at the CVSTrac source management system display for SQLite that was replaced by Fossil on 20090811. Open Source Web-Based Active Directory Management Tool' title='Open Source Web-Based Active Directory Management Tool' />Otherwise, they may need to purchase the enterprise version, which has more than 2,0. Role based access, orchestration, automation, an event inspector and more are all included in the paid version. Plus, its been designed to work on a variety of platforms. Ansible. Ansible uses Secure Shell SSH to provide a simple management tool with very strong security. It offers a number of other services besides configuration management, such as workflow monitoring, automating app deployment for updates, and more. Ansible focuses on five principles A small learning curve Ease of use Automation for almost everything Efficiency Strong security. Its an open source program too, so its a good choice for new and small businesses that dont have a huge budget. Its also useful for those who need a configuration management tool but dont have the time to learn how to use some of the more complicated programs. A paid version with more features is also available. Salt. Salt is a part of a larger application designed for enterprise level operations. It makes use of minions little sub processes that take commands from the main Salt system and then report the results of those commands. Salt supports a large number of hosts simultaneously, and its very easy to create configuration files. The learning curve here is fairly low, so Salt is a good choice for those without a lot of programming knowledge. Because its not open source though, it cant be easily customized. However, you can use any language you want to render your configurations, so you do have some control over your files. Microsofts Power. Shell DSCPower. Shell Desired State Configuration DSC is a configuration management solution created by Microsoft. It now comes standard with Windows 8. Windows Server 2. R2. DSC enables system administrators to easily manage files, directories, registry settings, and user accounts. Because it runs in the familiar Windows environment, Power. Shell DSC is going to be more intuitive for Windows users. Configurations are authored using either Power. Shell or a third party tool, then prepared to be either pushed or pulled. This means either the server pushes updates onto individual computers, or those computers pull updates from the server. Power. Shell is another useful option for those without a lot of programming skills, but its limited in that its only available for Windows. Cobbler. Cobbler is based on the ideas of reuse, reduce, and recycle. This Linux installation makes use of a large library of different templates for creating configuration services. All of its response files are created from templates, so much of the coding involved is reused. Besides its many templates, Cobbler has a huge library of snippets you can add to these templates. This makes creating your own configurations very easy, because theres no need to write a lot of code. Cobbler can also be connected to other configuration management programs, like Puppet. CFEngine. CFEngine is one of the oldest configuration management systems available, which means its gone through a number of updates already. Its moved from focusing on a local data center to being more cloud based. CFEngines automation framework is paired with a monitoring and modeling compliance engine that takes up very little space on your system. Its easy to create a configuration profile simply model your ideal state, simulate the changes you need to make before actually making them, and then confirm the configuration, setting it for automatic repairs when needed. Windows 7 Ultimate Pt-Pt 32 Bits Iso here. CFEngines library will help you build your state, making this configuration management tool fairly easy to use. Which Configuration Management Tool Is Right For You Chef is written in Ruby, so it can be customized by those who know the language. It also includes free features, plus it can be upgraded from open source to enterprise level if necessary. On top of that, its a very flexible product. Puppet is also a Ruby based configuration management tool, but while it has some free features, much of what makes Puppet great is only available in the paid version. Organizations that dont need a lot of extras will find Puppet useful, but those needing more customization will probably need to upgrade to the paid version. Ansible is a very secure option since it uses Secure Shell. Its a simple tool to use, but it does offer a number of other services in addition to configuration management.