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
   

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6. 1998 - Our Story Begins
   

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9. 2003 - The Tool Wars
   

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14. 2007 - Idempotence
    and Virtualization
    

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15. nigel
    ben hughes
    lutterkort
    littleidea
    me
    (still bald)
    nasrat
    (obviously)
    luke
    kartar
    ripienaar
    

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19. 2010 2016
    

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22. 2011 - The Rise
    of Devops
    

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25. Source: Donnie Berkholz, Redmonk 2015
    

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28. 2018 - The New
    Stack
    

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31. "Virtualization
    took us from
    pets to cattle.
    Unikernels take
    us from cattle to
    insects."
    — Justin
    Cormack Devops
    Cafe #69
    

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33. Thank you!
    Eric Sorenson
    @ahpook
    eric@puppet.com
    

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