In the cloud, multiple tools provide automation for infrastructure, compliance, and security management. Configuration management tools allow increased consistency, faster provisioning, better version control on configurations, required governance & control, and speedier recovery from critical events.
Some of the most popular configuration management tools include:
Puppet
Puppet is a cloud configuration management tool that deals with IT inventory on your cloud. Puppet uses declarative language to describe the system configuration in organized modules. Its biggest competitor is Chef.
Chef
Chef is a platform for managing servers in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid environment. Similar to Puppet, it deals with managing infrastructure, configuration, and deployment.
Ansible
Ansible is a comparatively new tool that allows for the automation of provisioning, configuration management, orchestration, and deployment. It is an open-source platform that can help with IT infrastructure automation.
Terraform
Terraform has become quite popular in recent years Although it is not explicitly a CM tool, it allows existing tools to better bootstrap and initialize resources. It focuses on a higher-level abstraction of the data center and relevant resources while allowing CM tools in individual systems.
SaltStack
SaltStack is an intelligent, event-driven automation software with convenient integration into many cloud providers such as Amazon Web services (AWS) and Google Cloud.