After the first post on configuration management, today I want to write about what I consider one of the biggest flaws in all systems I am aware about so far. They all live pretty much in “splendid isolation” and ignore whatever surrounds them.

My professional background is integration software and I attribute it to this fact, that for me it is a rather obvious real-world requirement to not ignore what is around you, but connect with it. In the past this was typically applied to applications on the business level. So having the ERP system talk with the CRM and SCM applications is well-established. But of course only your own imagination stops you from doing the same for other software. For an example, please check my post on integration of ALM software.

So what specifically makes integration an interesting aspect of configuration management? There are many different “layers” of configuration management out there. It starts with the infrastructure where you typically find a CMDB (Configuration Management Database), that contains information about computers and other components (esp. network). Then there are tools like Chef, Puppet, Ansible etc. that manage the operating system. (I know that is quite a simplification, because you can obviously handle other aspects that way as well; and I have done that extensively.)

A whole “new” level comes into play with containers like Docker. They come, again, with their own tools to manage configuration and operations. Then there is infrastructure-level software like databases, middleware, application servers, etc.

And last but not least, you finally hit the actual application. This is, by the way, the only, if any, level that the business will be interested in. They do not care about the vast complexity underneath, the interdependencies, etc. But of course they expect us to deliver value fast, without interruptions or failures, and for as little money as possible.

If there is no well-managed link between all those layers (and of course the number of layers needs to be multiplied by the number of environment types), how could you be able to handle things, let alone handle them well?

This is why I firmly believe, you need integration, governance, workflow capabilities etc. around configuration management.