Comparison of Configuration Management Tools

Dr. Jonas Trüstedt from ATIX AG compares three open source tools for configuration management: Ansible, Puppet and SaltStack. How do they differ and which one is best used when? Every server has configurations for services and applications. These must be documented and maintained. To avoid disruptions and failures and still manage a large number of servers with their configurations, we recommend using configuration management tools. This allows configurations to be mapped and deployed at hierarchical levels. The three tools deliver similar results, but differ considerably in their design, use, configuration and execution.