Best Configuration Management Tools

Simple, agentless automation for configuration, deployment, and orchestration.

Rudder automates inventory, patching, vulnerability management, and system hardening, offering visual and YAML policy editing for Linux and Windows at scale, with optional subscription for extended features.

Expect a strong Python presence among maintained projects.

Ansible is an IT automation and configuration management tool that automates tasks such as server provisioning, configuration enforcement, application deployment, and orchestration of complex workflows. It uses human-readable YAML files (playbooks) to describe automation tasks and connects to target machines over SSH (agentless) to execute them. With modules for managing various system aspects (packages, services, cloud resources, etc.), Ansible allows teams to maintain consistent environments, reduce manual effort, and accelerate deployment by treating infrastructure as code in a simple, declarative manner.