Configuration management...

Anybody that ever administered more than few machines knows how hard it is to keep them maintained. Especially when you have a mix of different operating systems, and I mean different like Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, etc. For that purpose many different configuration management applications were written, but there is no perfect solution. In case you are running Windows environment, then I have to admit that Active directory, along with several supporting tools is actually very good tool. On the Unix scene, there is much more diversity and, apparently, not such a good solution.

I stubled upon this blog post that compares different CM applications, most notably puppet, cfengine and bcfg2. It turns out that in comments section you'll find info and links to a lot more, e.g. cdist, chef, and many others.

Finally, I looked on Wikipedia while writing this blog post and found that there is a page devoted to the comparison of different CM application. I have to admit that Wikipedia is really becoming an ubiquitous source of information, despite occasional inaccuracies.