Hello,

I'd like to get some feedback on users of both centralized and decentralized configuration management systems in mostly heterogeneous settings. Most systems are focusing on huge scalability of node instances, but not necessarily for a small team managing a diverse set of nodes (web, database, files, directory, backup, etc...).

Please share your thoughts and pain-points on using configuration management systems in such environments.

frankly, in SMB, you don't even see much Linux at all - sbs 2011 and an outsourced local IT company that doesn't really want to do anything else is the common case

I still like configuring by editing the config files directly, or having a script generate them (config files that need IP addresses often have to be different in different machines or networks). I distribute these things via rsync/ssh so I can automate it. In the AWS cloud, I make things more dynamic in an AMI with these scripts to generate configs. I've tried many config tools, but find them harder to work with. Maybe that's because I am admin with strong low level programming skills and these tools like chef and puppet are intended for admins that are encumbered by the lack of such skills (so the tools would actually look faster to them). OTOH, by having not used these tools, it's hard to see how much they may have improved. But tools of the past were touted as great new things and they were not, so I cannot trust these kinds of promotions, either (they need to get into describing what has been improved).