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.