...

This can make us more agile and flexible as system administrators, able to deal with fast-changing requirements and deliver things quickly to the business. We can also produce higher-quality, more reliable work.

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Buzzword compliance

Declarative system

Puppet is said to be a declarative system. See "idempotence", below.

Imperative system

Chef is said to be ...Denoting an element of a set that is unchanged in value when multiplied or otherwise operated on by itselfan imperative system.

Idempotence

Denoting an element of a set that is unchanged in value when multiplied or otherwise operated on by itself.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+idempotent^{Image Removed}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotence^{Image Removed}

Paraphrasing ansibleworks.com's web site: An "idempotent" resource model describes the desired state of computer systems and services, not the paths to get them to this state. Thus, no matter what state a system is in, this type of system understands how to transform it to the desired state (some also support a "dry run" mode to preview needed changes). This allows reliable and repeatable IT infrastructure configuration, avoiding the potential failures from scripting and script-based solutions that describe explicit and often irreversible actions rather than the end goal.

DevOps

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps^{Image Removed}

Systems management

One of the functions of systems management is configuration management.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_management^{Image Removed}

Other configuration management tools (vs. Puppet)

• http://java.dzone.com/articles/comparing-flavors-config^{Image Removed}
• http://bitfieldconsulting.com/puppet-vs-chef
• http://www.opscode.com/chef/#which-chef
• https://cfengine.com/what-is-cfengine
• https://github.com/benhoskings/babushka^{Image Removed}
• http://www.ansibleworks.com/configuration-management/^{Image Removed}
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_management^{Image Removed}
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_configuration_management_software

From one person's comment to the "versus" article<http://bitfieldconsulting.com/puppet-vs-chef^{Image Modified}> above:
Chef will draw in Ruby developers because it's not declarative, and because it's easy.
My experience is that most developers don't do declarative systems. Everyday languages are imperative, and when you're a developer looking to get something deployed quickly, you're most likely to pick the tool that suits your world view.
Systems Administrators tend to use more declarative tools (make, etc.)
Developers and Systems Administrators also have a divergent set of incentives. Developers are generally rewarded for delivering systems quickly, and SA's are rewarded for stability. IMHO, Chef is a tool to roll out something quickly, and Puppet is the one to manage the full lifecycle. That's why I think Chef makes a good fit for cloud deployment because Vm instances have a short lifespan.

• Chef will draw in Ruby developers because it's not declarative, and because it's easy.
  My experience is that most developers don't do declarative systems. Everyday languages are imperative, and when you're a developer looking to get something deployed quickly, you're most likely to pick the tool that suits your world view.
  Systems Administrators tend to use more declarative tools (make, etc.)
  Developers and Systems Administrators also have a divergent set of incentives. Developers are generally rewarded for delivering systems quickly, and SA's are rewarded for stability. IMHO, Chef is a tool to roll out something quickly, and Puppet is the one to manage the full lifecycle. That's why I think Chef makes a good fit for cloud deployment because Vm instances have a short lifespan.