Twenty Years of Configuration Management

My first configuration management deployment was in 1998, using CFengine 1.5 to manage a fleet of Sun Ultra 2s. In the two decades since then, many things have changed but some constants remain. In this talk I’ll identify common patterns that have emerged, share some lessons learned, and relate a few funny stories. The astute observer will notice that there is still one year left until it’s exactly twenty years, and accordingly I will attempt to predict the future based on trendlines and tea leaves.

Presented at Config Management Camp PDX on 4 Aug 2017

Transcript

1. Twenty Years of Configuration Management Eric Sorenson // @ahpook // eric@puppet.com
6. 1998 - Our Story Begins
9. 2003 - The Tool Wars
14. 2007 - Idempotence and Virtualization
15. nigel ben hughes lutterkort littleidea me (still bald) nasrat (obviously) luke kartar ripienaar
19. 2010 2016
22. 2011 - The Rise of Devops
25. Source: Donnie Berkholz, Redmonk 2015
28. 2018 - The New Stack
31. "Virtualization took us from pets to cattle. Unikernels take us from cattle to insects." — Justin Cormack Devops Cafe #69
33. Thank you! Eric Sorenson @ahpook eric@puppet.com