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Book Review: "Taste Test, 2nd edition" and Q& A with Matt Jaynes

Taste Test, by Matt Jaynes, is a book that uses a simple scenario to compare Ansible, SaltStack, Chef and Puppet. On the recently released 2nd edition it adds new chapters on Docker, the communities around the tools, and how they fare on security. InfoQ took this opportunity to talk with Matt to know more about his thoughts on the tools and his approach to configuration management when consulting.

João Miranda
on Jul 14, 2014
Virtual Panel: Configuration Management Tools in the Real World

Configuration management tools are a hot topic on the DevOps community and IT organizations in general. InfoQ reached out to users of each of the major tools (Ansible, CFEngine, Chef, Puppet and SaltStack) to ask them about their experiences. Why did they choose a given tool? How was the tool introduced in the organization? These are some of the questions they answered.

João Miranda
on Jul 01, 2014
Preparing for Scale: InfoQ Virtual Roundtable with Cloud Practitioners

How should organizations plan for a cloud environment and optimize it for efficiency at scale? InfoQ reached out to 3 leading cloud practitioners to uncover practical advice on this topic. Each panelist has dealt with the sometimes-messy transition from on-premises to cloud, and coached organizations through their journey.

Richard Seroter
on Jun 29, 2014
CFEngine's Decentralized Approach to Configuration Management

Mark Burgess and Diego Zamboni introduce CFEngine. They describe the challenges regarding web scale - scale, complexity and knowledge - and how CFEngine helps to tackle those challenges with a fundamentally decentralized and knowledge-oriented approach. An example demonstrates how those ideas translate into practice.

Diego Zamboni Mark Burgess
on Jun 24, 2014
The Top Automation Tools for Public Cloud at Scale

As more organizations expand their use of public cloud services, from early-stage startups to the biggest businesses and governments in the world, the problems of cloud computing at scale start to arise.

Andi Mann
on Jun 21, 2014
Purely Functional Configuration Management with Nix and NixOS

This article gives a short introduction to NixOS, a Linux distribution, and to Nix, the package manager on which NixOS is based. These provide a declarative approach to configuration management with many advantages to users, such as strong reproducibility and atomic upgrades and rollbacks.

Eelco Dolstra
on Jun 08, 2014
Ansible’s View on IT Automation

Michael DeHaan, creator of Ansible, introduces the general-purpose IT automation system. He describes the tool’s guiding principles: simplicity, ease of use and maximum security. The philosophy behind its community is also discussed, including the importance of Ansible’s plugin-based model. Michael uses a simple but common scenario to demonstrate Ansible.

Michael DeHaan
on May 31, 2014
Exploring the ENTIRE DevOps Toolchain for (Cloud) Teams

When assessing technology that empowers a DevOps transformation, it’s easy to focus in on the headline capabilities (“configuration management!”) and miss out on the bigger picture. How can teams shipping cloud (or on-premises) applications use the full suite of DevOps technologies to simplify delivery and management at scale? This article classifies and explains key enabling technologies.

Richard Seroter
on May 28, 2014
DevOps @ large investment bank

This article is part of the “DevOps War Stories” series. In each issue we hear what DevOps brings to a different organisation, we learn what worked and what didn’t, and chart the challenges faced during adoption. This time a very personal story on introducing a DevOps mindset at a large bank. In particular how the automation of configuration and release management processes enabled collaboration.

Niek Bartholomeus
on Dec 11, 2013
Book Review: Vagrant up and running

Mitchell Hashimoto released his book "Vagrant up and running" which covers everything from basic Vagrant usage to extending its functionality. In seven chapters he explains every aspect of Vagrant - from staring a default VM to extending it via plug-ins.

Matthias Marschall
on Sep 06, 2013
Managing Build Jobs for Continuous Delivery

The number of jobs in a continuous integration tool can range from a few to several thousand, all performing various functions. There is an approach to manage these jobs in a more efficient manner.

Martin Peston
on May 24, 2013
5 Configuration Management Best Practices

There has been a lot of conversation going on around the configuration of applications, and how to manage it. This article explores things people can do from within their code to make their lives, and the lives of anyone else who has to administer or maintain their application, easier. These patterns have been used a number of times on ThoughtWorks projects, and they have proven their worth.

Chris Read
on Jun 03, 2010

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