Hello everyone!
Today we are going to talk about one of the most commonly used terms in DevOps world. Yes, Configuration Management.
So let's jump right in!
1.What is Configuration Management?
Configuration management is a system engineering process for establishing and maintaining consistency in a software product throughout its lifecycle.
A software product is usually supported by multiple hardware systems or servers. And all these systems need to be patched, updated or reconfigured over a period of time. That's where Configuration Management comes to the rescue.
Different types of configuration management tools are:
i)Pull Configuration(Puppet, Chef)
ii)Push Configuration(Ansible,Saltstack)
2.Why do we need Configuration Management?
Let's consider a scenario where we have an application that runs in php 5.0 and mysql 4.7. At the time of going live for the first time, the application was deployed on 3 servers.
Later as the company grows, it needed some more features to be added to the application and the overall load increased. So, they had to add 100 more servers. On top of that, the development team had decided to update the php version from 5.0 to 7.0 and mysql from 4.7 to 5.7.
Now there is a requirement to update php and mysql versions in all 103 servers which is going to waste a lot of time and effort if we plan to do that manually.
Here, you need Configuration Management.
Configuration management is included as a key systems engineering practice because it works!
It prevents unnecessary costs & effort and helps IT stop firefighting. Moreover, good systems engineers have learned, through practical experience, that it pays for itself many times over.
Don’t pay the price later! Use configuration management to focus on fire prevention, not fire fighting.
That's all for today! See you again tomorrow in our next discussion.
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_ Thank you for reading!
_Sudipa