Simple Windows+Linux server provisioning? Chef/Puppet/Ansible etc

Posted by Andrew on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Andrew
Published on 2012-09-28T04:32:06Z Indexed on 2012/10/12 15:39 UTC
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Filed under:

puppet

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chef

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devops

I'm primarily a developer, part time devops; and manage servers here and there for my projects.

I want to automate provisioning of web/app/database servers going forward for my projects
I manage a mixture of both Windows and Linux servers (VPS, cloud and dedicated)

I've looked at investigated Chef/Puppet/Ansible briefly; and I am wanting to find something that:

Is easy to learn and understand. I don't want to invest weeks into understanding a complicated piece of tech.
Ideally does not require a server ("master server") to hold the configurations
Supports provisioning of Windows and Linux servers
Comes with suitable documentation to get started

Does anyone have any advice on what tool is best suited?

Thanks

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