Sascha Bates on Configuration Management: It’s Not about the Tool

Velocity 2013 speaker series

“Puppet and Chef are completely different, and yet exactly the same,” admits Sascha Bates (@sascha_d). In this interview about her talk at the upcoming Velocity Conference, she discusses common pitfalls that people can avoid when getting started with configuration management. And here’s a hint: it isn’t about which tool you choose.

After years in the trenches helping a variety of organizations implement Chef, Sascha learned (often the hard way) a few critical things that she’ll share in her talk. Key points from our discussion include:

  • When getting started with configuration management, people often fret over which tool they use, when they should be thinking more about the overall integration with their particular system. [Discussed at the 0:50 mark.]
  • Both Chef and Puppet have the concept of a package manager, and if you’re not setting that up properly, things can spiral out of control quickly. [Discussed at the 1:25 mark.]
  • Her top configuration management anti-patterns. [Discussed at the 2:43 mark.]
  • What superpower someone will have after attending her talk. [Discussed at the 3:55 mark.]

Watch the whole interview here:

This is the first in a series of posts related to the upcoming Velocity Conference in Santa Clara, CA (June 18-20). We’ll be highlighting speakers in a variety of ways, from video and email interviews to posts by the speakers themselves.

 

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