Continuous configuration automation (CCA) is the methodology or process of automating the deployment and configuration of settings and software for infrastructure both physical and virtual.
Contents
Overview
Continuous configuration automation is marketed for data center and application configuration management. CCA tools address these challenges through a programmable framework which allows for ease of configuration and orchestration through coding, planning, and incrementally adopting industry best practices.
Relationship to DevOps
CCA tool are included in this realm of DevOps tooling and are often included as part of a DevOps toolchain. CCA grew out of a push to develop more reliable software faster. Gartner describes CCA as “Embodying lean, agile and collaborative concepts core to DevOps initiatives, CCA tools bring a newly found level of precision, efficiency and flexibility to the challenges of infrastructure and application configuration management.”
Tools
CCA tools support administrators and developers to automate the configuration and Orchestration of physical and virtual infrastructure in a systematic way that give visibility to state of infrastructure within an enterprise. Generally thought of as an extension of traditional infrastructure as code (IaC) frameworks, CCA tools leverage IaC to “Change configure and automate infrastructure". There are a few different CCA tools including Ansible (software), Chef software, Otter (software), Puppet software, and SaltStack. Each tool has a different method of interacting with the system some are agent-based, push or pull, through an interactive UI. Similar to adopting any DevOps tools, there are barriers to bring on CCA tools and factors that hinder and accelerate adoption.
Evaluation factors
Evaluations of CCA tools may consider the following: