--- title: Configuration Management description: Configuration management is the practice of maintaining computer systems, servers, and software in a known, consistent state. Learners will understand how to automate infrastructure provisioning, manage system settings, and use tools like Ansible, Terraform, or Puppet. category: programming-tech subcategory: devops difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/configuration-management --- # Configuration Management Configuration management is the practice of maintaining computer systems, servers, and software in a known, consistent state. Learners will understand how to automate infrastructure provisioning, manage system settings, and use tools like Ansible, Terraform, or Puppet. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 3 Websites ## Websites ### 1. Ansible Documentation The official Ansible documentation, covering installation, inventory, playbooks, roles, modules, variables, and collections, plus user guides and module references. Readers can write idempotent playbooks and automate server configuration and deployment across many hosts. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://docs.ansible.com/ **Tags:** ansible, configuration-management, infrastructure-automation, playbooks, official-documentation ### 2. puppet.com Puppet.com is the official home of Puppet, an automation and configuration management platform for IT infrastructure. It offers product information, documentation, tutorials, webinars, and access to Puppet Forge modules to learn and implement configuration management across servers and cloud environments. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://puppet.com **Tags:** websites, technology-computer-science, devops--cloud ### 3. ansible.com Official site for Ansible, the open-source IT automation tool by Red Hat. It provides product information, comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and resources for automating configuration management, application deployment, and orchestration with Ansible Core and the Ansible Automation Platform. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://docs.ansible.com/ **Tags:** websites, technology-computer-science, devops--cloud ## Books ### 1. Puppet 5 Beginner’s Guide **Author:** John Arundel Third edition of John Arundel's hands-on Puppet guide, assuming no prior sysadmin experience. Readers learn to write manifests, use Hiera data, types, and loops, manage files, packages, and services, and provision cloud resources with Puppet 5. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/178847290X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, technology-computer-science, devops--cloud ### 2. Learning Puppet 4 **Author:** Jo Rhett O'Reilly guide to Puppet 4 configuration management, covering the Puppet language, manifests, modules, Hiera data, and the Puppet server. Readers will be able to write modules and manage the configuration of many servers declaratively instead of by hand. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1491907665?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** puppet, configuration-management, infrastructure-as-code, devops, server-automation ### 3. Learning Chef **Author:** Mischa Taylor, Seth Vargo O'Reilly introduction to Chef for developers and sysadmins new to configuration management. Readers write Ruby-based recipes and cookbooks, test them with Test Kitchen, and use Chef Server, roles, environments, and data bags to automate infrastructure. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1491944935?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, technology-computer-science, devops--cloud --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/configuration-management