https://DevOpsCloud.io -- Cloud Monk Losang Jinpa, Ph.D., MCSE/MCT, GitOps DevOps Engineer

TLDR: Configuration automation refers to the use of tools and scripts to automatically manage and apply configurations to systems, software, or environments. It eliminates manual intervention, ensuring consistency, accuracy, and repeatability across deployments. Widely adopted in DevOps practices, tools like Ansible, Chef, and Puppet enable teams to define configurations as code, supporting scalable and efficient infrastructure management.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_management

Configuration automation employs Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles, allowing configurations to be described declaratively or procedurally in code. For instance, an Ansible playbook or Puppet manifest can define the desired state of servers, applications, and networking components. These configurations are version-controlled, enabling traceability and facilitating collaboration among teams. By automating repetitive configuration tasks, organizations reduce the risk of errors and prevent configuration drift.

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/automation/what-is-configuration-management

Beyond efficiency, configuration automation enhances reliability and agility in dynamic environments, such as cloud-native and containerized infrastructures. Automated configurations ensure rapid scaling, quick recovery from failures, and consistent deployments across environments. Integration with CI/CD pipelines further accelerates delivery timelines, making configuration automation a cornerstone of modern IT operations and software delivery.

https://docs.ansible.com/

• Linux configuration automation
  • Fedora-CentOS-Oracle Linux-Red Hat Enterprise Linux configuration automation
  • Debian-Ubuntu Linux configuration automation
• Windows configuration automation
• macOS configuration automation
• iOS configuration automation
• Android configuration automation

• Git
• GitHub
  • GitHub Actions
• Bitbucket
• Cloud9
• GitLab

• Ansible
• AWS CloudFormation and AWS OpsWorks
• Azure Resource Manager
• Chef
• Chocolatey - choco
• Homebrew - brew
• Octopus
• PowerShell DSC - PowerShell
• Puppet
• Salt
• Terraform
• Windows Package Manager - WPM

• Kubernetes
• kubectl
• KiND
• minikube
• GitOps

• GitHub Actions
• Azure DevOps
• Jenkins - Jenkins X
• Circle CI - CircleCI
• Bamboo - Bamboo CI

• PagerDuty
• Artifactory
• JMeter - Apache JMeter
• Appium

Continuous testing

• Selenium
• JUnit
• PyTest

• Prometheus
• Splunk
• Grafana
• Nagios

Build Tools – see also Package managers

• Maven
• Gradle

• Consul
• Packer
• Terraform
• Vault
• Vagrant

• JetBrains Toolbox
• JetBrains
• JetBrains IntelliJ - IntelliJ - IntelliJ IDE - JetBrains IntelliJ IDE
• Visual Studio
• Visual Studio Code

• Sonatype NEXUS: Claims to be the world’s #1 repository manager, Sonatype efficiently distributes parts and containers to developers acting as a single source of truth for all of your components, binaries and build artifacts. Its features are:
  • Offers universal support for all popular build tools.
  • Efficiency and flexibility to empower development teams.
  • Source: https://sonatype.com/nexus/repository-oss

• JFRog Artifactory: Functions as the single source of truth for all container images, packages, and Helm charts, as they move across the entire DevOps pipeline. Its features are:
  • Scale with active/active clustering and multi-site replication for your DevOps setup.
  • Allows you to choose the tool stack and integrates with your environment.
  • Release faster and automate your pipeline via powerful REST APIs.
  • Source: https://jfrog.com/artifactory

• CloudRepo: Used for managing, sharing and distributing private Maven and Python repositories.
  • Stores the repositories across multiple servers to ensure high availability.
  • Easily provide or restrict access to your clients.
  • Integrates with all major CI tools.
  • Source: https://cloudrepo.io