configuration management, was: RE: clone PE2950

[Alex Howells]

2008/6/11 Bryan Mclellan <bryanm at widemile.com>:
> Hey hey, let's not call puppet mucky :)
>
> The trouble lies in inheriting systems with little tweaks in far off places that bite you one at a time. I personally dislike working on heavily customized systems. I suppose that's why I use puppet+git+iclassify. Git logs are easier than wikifying :)
>

Wasn't trying to insult Puppet, just noting that it'd be a lot of
overhead vs. cloning in a 2-server setup ;)  The benefits are really
only reaped with 10+ servers or multiple administrators, and even
then, you still have to change your mindset to properly reap those
benefits ... local changes on boxes become 'backwards' and
repository-driven configuration is 'forwards'!

Where possible, stick to stock configurations.  However, my point
still stands:  it will be faster to swap out some IPs and hostname
information than start afresh and need to configure even basic stuff
like Apache 2.x virtual hosting -- we're talking thirty seconds vs. at
least 5-10 minutes, possibly a lot longer if things are complex.

If you don't already have Puppet or CFengine, expect to spend at least
a week or two converting to it... the savings come a few months later
when you can bootstrap a new server in 2 minutes vs. 2 hours :P