Wikipedia defines Configuration management (CM) as a systems engineering process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product’s performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. In the DevOps world, Configuration Management is a software-engineering discipline which consists of the tools and techniques (processes or methodology) that a company uses to manage change to its software assets.

Forester Wave conducted an evaluation of top DevOps Config Management tools and came up with a list of top config tools used in the DevOps world. You can read the detailed report here.

Out of the evaluated configuration management tools, 4 were considered as Leaders (which were essentially two tools: Puppet and Chef), 5 were considered as Strong Performers (SaltStack, Normation Professional Services, Rudder, Ansible Tower, and Ansible), and 5 were considered as Contenders (Salt, Microsoft Azure Automation, CFEngine, Microsoft PowerShell Desired State Configuration, and CFEngine Community Edition.

Top 14 DevOps Configuration Management Tools

The Forrester report classifies the top configuration management tools in terms of Current Offering (Deployment, Configuration Modeling, Monitoring and Governance, and Community Support), Strategy (Product Strategy, Market Approach, Consulting & Support), and Market Presence (Installed Base & Corporate Profitability) and the results looked like this:

What Configuration management tools do you use in your DevOps world? What do you like about it most? Leave a comment and let me know.