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What would be an appropriate tool/approach for configuration management of a relatively small number of VPS/VMs (1-5). Even though it's a small number I'm a big fan of "nuke 'n boot" in case of any problems and therefore need to be able to setup a new VPS with an existing configuration quickly (minutes).

Puppet, chef and the likes seem to be fairly oversized for that setup - apart from the fact that they aim to sell their enterprise version and the open source version is rather crippled. Open Source is a must criteria for me.

I currently manage most of this stuff manually by having copies of the relevant config files on dropbox or summaries in evernote, etc. Preferably I would like to use a tool that runs on a local Ubuntu server or so from which I could easily manage one to a few remote VPS or local VM instances.

Does anyone have experience with that topic and can recommend something? I consider chef and puppet oversized, etckeeper on the other hand is a bit too limited.

Edit:
A solution with Management UI would be preferred

I summarize the proposals from the comments here:

  • Puppet Open Source version without UI and limited features
  • Chef Open Source version with a bit less features
  • Capistrano non UI, scripting or ruby
  • Foreman UI for Puppet, Chef
binaryanomaly
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  • I think you may get better suggestions at http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ – Ramesh Apr 27 '14 at 16:40
  • Thanks, didn't know about that community yet. On the other hand it's pretty linux specific so... – binaryanomaly Apr 27 '14 at 16:43
  • I am not sure of it. May be, you can take a look at this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_configuration_management_software – Ramesh Apr 27 '14 at 16:50
  • Thanks, I found that page, too. I'm still hoping that someone with hands on experience in that matter might share his experience/approach to this specific question. – binaryanomaly Apr 27 '14 at 17:07
  • Capistrano is a good one to start with. http://capistranorb.com/ – slm Apr 27 '14 at 17:10
  • You should have a look into Foreman if UI is a hard requirement. It uses puppet or chef as a configuration backend. Also, puppet is opensource and features are same as enterprise version. – ek9 Apr 27 '14 at 20:05
  • Ansible is my favorite as it's agentless. – 0xC0000022L Apr 12 '18 at 15:04

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