This is a comparison of free (libre) and open source configuration management software.

Basic properties

	Language	License	Mutual auth	Encrypts	First release	Latest stable release
Arusha Project (ARK)	Python	BSD			2001-07-21	2005-04-19 20050419
Bcfg2	Python	BSD			2004-08-11	2008-02-12 0.9.5.7
Cfengine	C	GPL, FAL			1993	2008-06-11 2.2.7
ISconf	Python	GPL			1998	2006-08-13 4.2.8.233
LCFG	Perl	GPL			1994	2007-02-19 2007021901c
OCS Inventory NG with GLPI	Perl, PHP, C++	GPL			2003	2007
PCfengine	Python	GPL
PIKT	C	GPL			1998	2007-09-10 1.19.0
Puppet	Ruby	GPL			2005-08-30	2008-07-24 0.24.5
Quattor	Perl	EDG			2005-04-01	2007-12-12 1.3-2
Radmind	C	BSD			2002-03-26	2007-07-5 1.9.0
SmartFrog	Java	LGPL			2004-02-11	2008-01-21 3.12.018
STAF	C++	CPL			1998-02-16	2008-02-27 3.2.5

Platform support

Note: This means platforms on which a recent version of the tool has actually been used successfully, not platforms where it should theoretically work since it's written in good portable C/C++ or an interpreted language. It should also be listed as a supported platform on the project's web site.

	AIX	*BSD	HP-UX	Linux	Mac OS X	Solaris	Windows	Others
Arusha Project (ARK)
Bcfg2
Cfengine
ISconf
LCFG
OCS Inventory NG with GLPI
PCfengine
PIKT
Puppet
Quattor
Radmind
SmartFrog
STAF

Short descriptions

Not all tools have the same goal and the same feature set. To help distinguish between all of these software packages, here is a short description of each one.Arusha Project (ARK)

Manage package and configuration specification of hosts via a custom XML description language. Can be used as a front end for Cfengine or PIKT Provides some collaboration features between administration 'teams'. The last commit dates from April 2007Bcfg2

Software to manage the configuration of a large number of computers using a central configuration model and the client-server paradigm. The system enables reconciliation between clients' state and the central configuration specification. Detailed reports provide a way to identify unmanaged configuration on hosts. Generators enable code or template based generation of configuration files from a central data repository.Cfengine

Manages configuration of a large number of computers using the client-server paradigm. The server has the authoritative version of configuration: any client state which is different from the server is always reverted to the authoritative version. Configuration state is specified via a declarative language.ISconf

Tool to execute commands and replicate files on all nodes. The nodes do not need to be up; the commands will be executed when they boot. The system has no central server so commands can be launched from any node and they will replicate to all nodes. It implements many of the ideas in " Why Order Matters: Turing Equivalence in Automated Systems Administration".LCFG

LCFG manages the configuration with a central description language in XML, specifying resources, aspects and profiles. Configuration is deployed using the client-server paradigm. Appropriate scripts on clients (called "components") transcribe the resources into configuration files and restart services as needed. OCS Inventory NG with GLPI

OCS Inventory NG, when integrated with GLPI, provides inventory and asset management scans/database, package deployment, distributed script execution, and via plugins permissions management and other configuration management functions. Here is a good diagram of its architecture. PCfengine

This tool aim to be a better Cfengine written in Python. It uses Python directly as a language to describe configuration files. In contrast to Cfengine, it determines automatically the order in which actions are applied in the client. You can read about its concepts and apiPIKT

PIKT is foremost a monitoring system that also does configuration management. "PIKT consists of a sophisticated, feature-rich file preprocessor; an innovative scripting language with unique labor-saving features; a flexible, centrally directed process scheduler; a customizing file installer; a collection of powerful command-line extensions; and other useful tools." Puppet

Puppet consists of a custom declarative language to describe system configuration, distributed using the client-server paradigm (using XML-RPC protocol), and a library to realize the configuration. The resource abstraction layer enables administrators to describe the configuration in high-level terms, such as users, services and packages.Quattor

"The quattor information model is based on the distinction between the desired state and the actual state. The desired state is registered in a fabric-wide Configuration Database (CDB), using a specially designed configuration language for expressing and validating configurations, composed out of reusable hierarchical building blocks called templates. Configurations are propagated to and cached on the managed nodes." Radmind

Radmind manages hosts configuration at the file system level. In a similar way to Tripwire (and other configuration management tools), it can detect external changes to managed configuration, and can optionally reverse the changes. Radmind does not have higher-level configuration element (services, packages) abstraction. A graphical interface is available (only) for Mac OS X.SmartFrog

Java-based tool to deploy and configure applications distributed across multiple machines. There is no central server; you can deploy a .SF configuration file to any node and have it distributed to peer nodes according to the distribution information contained inside the deployment descriptor itself. STAF

"The Software Testing Automation Framework (STAF) is an open source, multi-platform, multi-language framework designed around the idea of reusable components, called services (such as process invocation, resource management, logging, and monitoring)." There are STAF plugins to perform a variety of common configuration management functions, such as distributed scheduling, execution, and file copying.

References