The Problem With Configurations

Originally published in Netocratic

Configuration is one of those things we usually take for granted. Yet, as more and more configurations are added the use of configurations becomes hard and complicated. With enough configuration parameters, keeping track of what the current configuration “is” can be quite problematic. Often, people misconfigure systems due to various reasons such as poor documentation or unexpected interactions between different parameters. Sometimes, the configuration itself can be complex and requires a language to express it, raising the bar of required knowledge for defining the configuration. Despite the “boring” nature of configurations they can and do obliterate entire companies in matter of hours.

Read more

Thoughts about configuration management

Current configuration management tools solve a huge problem, providing a way to place repeatable, eventually coordinated application and server setup on large scale environments.

Although we have come a long way since handcrafting our servers, even with Chef or Puppet, I still feel like we’re chasing our tails.

Virtual Human

Before we had configurable software, we needed to edit a few source files or headers, change a few constants and recompile. Then configuration was presented, as means for a user to update the runtime features of a software without modifying the software itself. For the most part, software configuration stopped there. Even today, with what seems to be the proper way to handle configuration on multiple servers, we’re still editing text files and calling a shell command to restart or reload the service on the local machines.

Read more