Best Configuration Management Tools
Configuration management tools track changes to applications and their infrastructure to ensure that configurations are in a known and trusted state, and configuration details don’t rely on tribal knowledge of the development team. Configuration management software provides an accurate historical record of the system state, which is helpful for project management, auditing, and debugging. These tools increase efficiency and stability and visibility into changes that occur in an application and streamline a company’s change control process. These platforms also integrate with version control systems, software testing products, bug-tracking tools, and other software development tools.
To qualify for inclusion in the Configuration Management category, a product must:
Best Configuration Management Tools At A Glance
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- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
GitHub is where the world builds software. Millions of individuals, organizations and businesses around the world use GitHub to discover, share, and contribute software. Developers at startups to Fort
- Software Engineer
- Senior Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 46% Small-Business
- 31% Mid-Market
2,612,256 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) intelligently delivers resilient IT services, reduces costs, boosts agent productivity and improves employee experiences – all on one AI platform for business t
- Consultant
- Software Engineer
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 72% Enterprise
- 21% Mid-Market
50,962 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform is Red Hat's primary enterprise automation product offering., it includes all of the tooling needed for building, deploying, and managing end-to-end automation at
- Software Engineer
- DevOps Engineer
- Information Technology and Services
- Financial Services
- 44% Enterprise
- 38% Mid-Market
293,907 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. With Config, you can review changes in configurations and relationships between AWS re
- Computer Software
- 42% Enterprise
- 31% Mid-Market
2,230,610 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
BackBox is an advanced, security-focused network device automation platform that simplifies and enhances network management for enterprises and service providers. By leveraging a robust Automation Bui
- Senior Network Administrator
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer & Network Security
- 53% Enterprise
- 28% Mid-Market
282 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Enable continuous services and compliance with automation and configuration management
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 41% Small-Business
- 30% Enterprise
14,031,499 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The Complete DevOps Platform. CloudBees empowers your software delivery teams to transform your business. CloudBees platform brings together development, operations, IT, security, and business teams t
- Software Engineer
- DevOps Engineer
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 48% Enterprise
- 40% Mid-Market
40,230 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Right Click Tools is part of Recast Software, based in Minneapolis, with over 60,000 active users, 1,000 enterprises, and 60 million endpoints supported across 125+ countires. Right Click Tools is a
- 71% Enterprise
- 24% Mid-Market
1,987 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
CoreView offers an end-to-end governance, security, and administration solution that stretches across the whole Microsoft 365 ecosystem--from your tenant level configurations, right up to your most cr
- Information Technology and Services
- Construction
- 54% Enterprise
- 33% Mid-Market
826 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
HashiCorp Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share. You can then u
- DevOps Engineer
- Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 35% Enterprise
- 33% Mid-Market
97,547 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
SolarWinds® Observability is a full-stack observability solution that addresses the needs of modern organizations of all sizes by providing deep visibility into their hybrid ecosystems while affording
- Network Engineer
- Network Administrator
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 46% Enterprise
- 37% Mid-Market
20,054 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The Progress Chef portfolio consists of multiple, integrated products. It offers a set of capabilities that provide organizations the flexibility to support different use cases. All these capabilities
- DevOps Engineer
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 41% Mid-Market
- 39% Enterprise
50,188 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Netplan is a utility for easily configuring networking on a linux system. You simply create a YAML description of the required network interfaces and what each should be configured to do. From this de
- Information Technology and Services
- 44% Mid-Market
- 28% Small-Business
104,400 Twitter followers
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- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Split was recently acquired by Harness® to bring teams the most robust feature management and experimentation solution on the market. Set up feature flags and safely deploy to production, controllin
- Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Financial Services
- 43% Mid-Market
- 37% Enterprise
1,537 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Bamboo is Atlassian's continuous delivery and release management tool. It offers first-class support for the "delivery" aspect of continuous delivery, tying automated builds, tests, and releases toget
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 41% Mid-Market
- 33% Enterprise
104,678 Twitter followers
Learn More About Configuration Management Tools
What are Configuration Management Tools?
In software, configuration management refers to the process of tracking and conducting changes made to applications during the development process. Configuration management tools track changes to applications and their infrastructure to ensure configurations are in a known and trusted state and configuration details don’t rely on DevOps tribal knowledge. These platforms enhance visibility across teams about system states and configuration statuses to empower efficiency and streamline a company’s control process. When desired configurations are determined, this software automatically configures systems to that state via configuration files.
Companies use configuration management software’s integrations with version control systems, software testing tools, bug tracking software, and other software development tools to facilitate internal best practices and productivity.
Key Benefits of Configuration Management Tools
- Increase efficiency
- Define change control processes
- Enable visibility and understanding across teams and departments
- Automate configuration
- Allow quicker restoration in cases of infrastructure failure
Why Use Configuration Management Tools?
Configuration management tools make life easier for DevOps teams and improve process quality by minimizing the risk of both human error and the need for human effort. Team knowledge becomes less ethereal and more concrete thanks to configuration management software’s record-keeping functionality. Configuration files enable this software to automatically configure systems to their desired state. Configuration management software’s maintenance of easily reproducible system states also improves response times when systems and applications fail.
Preserve and share knowledge — Application and system configuration can involve many intricate, finicky settings and moving parts. DevOps teams often run the risk of relying on tribal knowledge to maintain and adjust infrastructural configuration, which can cause trouble as teams and practices shift. With configuration management software, teams can exchange tribal knowledge for thorough records of change process documentation. This streamlines onboarding processes and preserves comprehensive knowledge in an easily accessible state, enabling a more efficient workflow and better collaboration. Configuration documentation and changes can be constantly adjusted and managed via this software, ensuring processes remain updated and visible.
Efficient configuration — Configuring applications and system infrastructure is meticulous work, and the configuration of a desired state can be challenging to reproduce. Configuration management software’s comprehensive historical records of system states alleviate this issue by presenting configuration information in an accessible form. Not only is this information readable by users, it also exists in the form of configuration files, allowing this software to automatically configure systems to their desired state. This alleviates workloads and allows DevOps team members to focus on other tasks.
Effective system restoration — Crashes, bugs, and full-on system failures can be relatively common in any DevOps environment. When applications and their infrastructure fail and systems go down, a DevOps teams’ number one priority is restoring all systems to get things running again as quickly as possible. Sometimes crashes can lead to software configurations being reset, which can make it difficult to restore to its desired state. Thanks to configuration management tools, teams can rest easy knowing configurations are fully recorded in an easily reproducible way. This makes it much easier for developers and IT professionals to restore software and system crashes.
Who Uses Configuration Management Tools?
Developers and IT professionals use configuration management solutions to facilitate shared knowledge and control internal systems and infrastructure. This promotes better DevOps workflows by encouraging software developers and Ops teams to work together in an agile environment.
Software developers — Software developers use configuration management tools to track and manage application infrastructures. This helps teams collaborate on builds while enhancing visibility and empowering productive responses when build configurations aren’t working. Developers also use configuration management software to maintain functional knowledge of system states in a DevOps environment, allowing them to collaborate with Ops teams more effectively.
IT professionals — IT professionals use configuration management tools to track and manage system states in a DevOps environment. This helps Ops teams collaborate when tackling infrastructure challenges and improving system architecture.
Configuration Management Tools Features
Configuration identification — Configuration management tools have the functionality to individually identify any instance, or version, of a software product or build. Every time a build is reconfigured or structured, configuration management can capture a “snapshot" of the entire state of the software, which is then stored in a comprehensive historical record. Builds can be rolled back to previous configurations if necessary, and teams have full visibility to promote effective collaboration.
Configuration control — Configuration management solutions formalize internal change processes through configuration control. Users can make changes to their software while ensuring each change is fully authorized and documented. Team leads can set permissions to control access across the team. This feature facilitates software changes by enabling review, authentication, and adherence to internal best practices when managing configuration.
Configuration status monitoring — Configuration management platforms not only record configuration changes but monitors the status of each instance of an application or system. This ensures the current configuration of each element of the system is always known. Users can react more effectively to issues thanks to the complete view delivered by configuration management software.
Automatic configuration — Configuration management software can automatically configure applications and systems to the desired state. By capturing and storing software states via configuration files, this software minimizes the manual aspect of software configuration. Users can indicate desired configurations so if a failure occurs, configuration management software can automatically reconfigure the system.
