What is Configuration Management?

Configuration management also supports the build process, which is important for delivery of a test release into the test environment. Simply sending Zip archives by e-mail will not be sufficient, because there are too many opportunities for such archives to become polluted with undesirable contents or to harbor left-over previous versions of items. Especially in later phases of testing, it is critical to have a solid, reliable way of delivering test items that work and are the proper version. Since all the necessary information is readily available and configured to give role-based access, senior-level managers can spend more time on strategic activities.

If you get indentation wrong in YAML, YAML parsers may see your file as invalid, and even if it’s tolerated, it may return incorrect data. Trusted by business builders worldwide, the HubSpot Blogs are your number-one source for education and inspiration. My next laptop will be configured for gaming with a fast processor and lots of memory. Cybersecurity news and best practices are full of acronyms and abbreviations. Without understanding what each one means, it’s difficult to comprehend the significance of…

Word Origin for configuration

Project Resource Planning Plan and allocate resources for timely delivery. An enterprise application platform with a unified set of tested services for bringing apps to market on your choice of infrastructure. Testing will be imperative when creating a config file and changing its functionality.

SREs take advantage of this on a regular basis, when deploying systems and tuning their performance, as well as during incident response. Almost everyone in an organization plays a role in effective and efficient configuration management. Configuration management processes, like the conductor of an orchestra, are there to ensure everyone is working to the same sheet of music. Once the desired state is determined, a well-designed configuration management system can monitor for changes, detect deviations, and correct those deviations . It ensures that the environment remains stable and prevents changes from going unnoticed and then becoming a bigger problem.

Backups and Data Storage

He believes the best products emerge from high performing teams and practices. Lou is a fan and advocate of old-school lean and systems thinking, XP, continuous delivery, and DevOps. Configuration management was traditionally a purely manual task, completed by a systems administrator.

Since the baseline of the software remains the same, any accompanying upgrades come at less to no fee. This allows organizations to get more value from their purchase, resulting in high ROI and increased business efficiency. Configuration management also implies that analyzing the development environment and ensuring that the test environment is identical is a simple task. This reduces deployment risk since the program is more certain to execute as predicted, and the tests conducted against it are indicative of the software’s actual delivery areas. One of the basic concepts of CFEngine is that users must implement modifications to computer configuration in a convergent way. Instead of describing the procedures required to implement a fix, CFEngine language provides the desired result.

British Dictionary definitions for configure

The purpose of this stage is to manage the alterations made to the software. As the project progresses, new baselines are developed, resulting in many software versions. In order to be able to roll forward and roll back configuration, it must be hermetic. Configuration that requires external resources that can change outside of its hermetic environment can be very hard to roll back. For example, configuration stored in a version control system that references data on a network filesystem is not hermetic.

This allows the application to continue fulfilling business functions while the team works on a permanent fix. Another downside of this lack of visibility is that it’s difficult to match the testing environment for an application to the production environment where it will live. This mismatch threatens the validity of performance testing, since the operating parameters when the application is live may be fundamentally different from those in the demo environment. Worse, a misconfiguration in the software may prevent it from deploying to production. In addition, many modern software has configuration management features built-in to store, track, monitor, and implement changes to their software from time to time.

Why is configuration management important?

Availability of accurate and timely data is essential in order for CM to provide operational value and a lack of this can often be a limiting factor. Capturing and disseminating the operating data to the various support organizations is becoming configuration components an industry in itself. Understanding the “as is” state of an asset and its major components is an essential element in preventive maintenance as used in maintenance, repair, and overhaul and enterprise asset management systems.

While config files can be very simple structures, they simplify extremely complex interfaces. One config file may not seem like it makes a big difference, but when that config file determines thousands of features on your device, you’ll quickly realize it’s necessary. But if they all stopped working one day, your apps would look a lot different and you’d expect some serious technical difficulties ahead. Some applications use binary formats, though, which means the data is encoded in some format that is not a natural language.

How Configuration Management Fits in With DevOps, Continuous Delivery, and More…

Webopedia resources cover technology definitions, educational guides, and software reviews that are accessible to all researchers regardless of technical background. A Human Resources Management System is a software application that supports many functions of a company’s Human Resources department, including benefits administration, payroll,… In the case of software, configuration can also refer https://globalcloudteam.com/ to the application’s settings. These settings can either be set by default, or configured manually by the user. D is correct because a test management tool that covers all phases of testing. In this question traceability which covers the requirement to test cases, recording of incidents/ Defect during execution and scheduling of tests which all test activities covered with a test management tool.

• For example, if you’re trying to configure a SQL server, you may use a configuration file to determine which IP addresses can access the database.
• The term is very common in computer science and mathematics, and in scientific and technological fields in general.
• Implementing more complexity in the system creates more work for users (e.g., increased cognitive load to read documentation).
• You can subtly nudge people in the right direction, but designating the wrong default will do a lot of harm.
• Continuous delivery is the process of ensuring that software is always in a releasable state.
• You can restrict editing permissions to certain team members and implement an approval process so that any configuration changes need prior review before they are rolled out to the application.

Workflow Management Use custom statuses and automate your team workflows. CM is about knowing what we did yesterday, what we are doing today, and what we will be doing in the future, as well as understanding the reasoning and authority behind every action/change that got us there. “ECSS-M-ST-40C Rev.1 – Configuration and information management | European Cooperation for Space Standardization”.

Resources

Moreover, using multiple tools can make business processes complicated and slow. Therefore, when organizations implement configuration management to their existing software with the support of the technical team, it helps them to reduce expenses on getting a new tool. CaaC states the configuration of servers, networks, data files, hardware, and other computing resources. As for IaaC, you have to put the code again in the version control system for CaaC. CMPIC’s goal is to help our students and their organizations fully understand and embrace best configuration management practices.