[lug] CM for a small sysadmin.

[David L. Anselmi]

What's a good CM system (ala chef, puppet, etc) for a single server managed by two or three admins?

Take for example, the cluedenver.org server that I happen to manage.  It's one server that provides 
a mailing list and web site.  I don't know what all is on it (apps or config) but I can figure it 
out well enough.

Now suppose that I want to migrate it to a cheaper provider, and/or upgrade it to something more 
modern.  And I'm going to get someone else to help, whose responsibilities will overlap mine but not 
entirely (so he might be handling all the drupal setup and I may handle all the mail list setup and 
we both handle everything else).

So as part of this migration I want to capture all the changes we make in a way that lets us know 
what's been done--so it's easier to communicate changes and to reproduce them if we want to move a 
service to a different host or rebuild the thing entirely.

I think the rebuild process should be:
- push a button to create a server in the cloud somewhere
- run the CM app to configure it correctly
- achieve world domination

OK, so before running the CM app maybe it needs to be installed, and the config adjusted to account 
for new host names or network addresses.

Things I do by hand that should be handled by the CM app:
- install software
- configure complex software like apache, tomcat (with custom apps), etc
- add yum repositories and install software from them
- create user accounts
- configure backups for data that can't be reproduced (like the mail list archives or user files)

I don't expect this to need to scale to google size, but maybe there will be 3 or 4 servers and 4 or 
5 admins one day.

I'm sure this sucks as a requirements document but maybe it's close.  Or you can help me explain 
what I mean.

Thanks!
Dave