What's the strengths and weaknesses of existing configuration management systems?

Posted by Daniel C. Sobral on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Daniel C. Sobral
Published on 2010-11-08T12:23:02Z Indexed on 2011/01/03 13:55 UTC
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Filed under:

puppet

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configuration-management

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chef

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cfengine

I was looking up here for some comparisons between CFEngine, Puppet, Chef, bcfg2, AutomateIt and whatever other configuration management systems might be out there, and was very surprised I could find very little here on Server Fault. For instance, I only knew of the first three links above -- the other two I found on a related google search.

So, I'm not interested in what people think is the best one, or which they like. I'd like to know the following:

Configuration Management System's name.
Why it was created (as opposed to using an existing solution).
Relative strengths.
Relative weaknesses.
License.
Link to project and examples.

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