A configuration management software helps organizations in managing their technical and managerial tasks that are associated with the formation, preservation, regulated change, and quality control of the range of work. A configuration management software also simplifies maintaining computer systems, servers, and software in a preferred and reliable state. It ensures that a system operates as it is anticipated to with the modifications made over time.

Top Five Features of a Configuration Management Software

Enforcement

Configuration management softwareprovides enforcement which could possibly be the most important feature of a configuration management solution. Enforcement ensures that a system is always configured to the anticipated state, and helps avoid configuration drift. Configuration drift generally happens while packaging updates, live debugging, etc.

Empowers Collaboration

Best Configuration management software helps team members in collaborating easily. With one alteration, configuration can be modified across the entire setup. Manual configuration on machines can most probably lead to unanticipated variances. Configuration management tools help teams in being on the same page so that everybody involved in the system remains updated about the changes being made.

Version Control

One of the paramount ways to facilitate collaboration is to have it in a version control system. Most of the configuration management solutions use some type of manuscript for configuration.

Enables Change Control

Since configuration management solutions are textual and VCS-friendly, users can make infrastructure changes through coding. All the alterations can be submitted as diffs or merge requests and can be reviewed prior to the agreement. Having clearly computed alterations with timestamps can make rebuilding instances much easier. With atomic changes, users can execute them at a speed they are at ease with rather than making too many changes at once.

Abstraction

Some system administrators maintain entirely standardized settings. Even if they use an all-Linux shop, they very likely have numerous distros that they support, or at minimum several versions of a distro. By deploying a configuration management solution, several of the OS specific applications of a configuration are abstracted away. A similar configuration file can be used to handle, for instance, the setting up of Apache HTTPD on both, Red Hat as well as Ubuntu systems.