On Thu, 25 Apr 2013, Atom Powers wrote:
Because configuration management is about a lot more than "running ssh in a 'for' loop." I've been using CfEngine for about a decade and recently moved to a puppet infrastructure. I can say with confidence that there are times when you want to have more control over what your configuration management system does than to run a sequence of commands on a set of hosts. If all you use it for is to boot-strap a system then a series of commands (properly customized for environment, operating system, role, etc.) is sufficient. If you want to *manage* the configuration of the system after it has been deployed then you need additional logic to, for example, avoid installing the same package every half hour, detect if something on the system has changed and take a specific action, update a package to a specific version only on hosts running a specific version of an operating system, etc. Sure, you can do anything with a command, and puppet has it's own limitations, but ask yourself /why/ you are implementing configuration management and choose the right solution for your environment.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you seem to be implying that Salt is not helping you do anything more than run commands. If so, it's important to note that it can both run commands and manage config ala puppet style. I would actually call this a major advantage, because it allows people who have no configuration management in place to start using a real configuration managment tool and be productive right now, and then gradually work their way into more advanced ways of doing things.
I agree with the general statement that you need to evaluate various tools and pick one that works best for your environment. As such, I don't think "picking a fight" sets the right tone. If you look at what you have to do to get Puppet, Chef, CFEngine, or Bcfg2 off the ground vs. Salt, then I think that is a more interesting discussion.
-phillip _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
