The systems that underlie modern enterprise computing are incredibly complex. Maintaining infrastructure by defining it via code (usually yaml) can simplify the process – teams can be assured that their expected systems are in place and configured as expected. This also allows system administrators to treat servers as cattle instead of snowflakes.
Ansible
Ansible is a great choice and is widely used in the industry. While it can be used to provision servers (particularly in the cloud), it shines in managing the configuration of anywhere from one to thousands of servers. It’s agentless and only requires SSH access to the target servers (also known as a “push model”). Ansible has thousands of modules that can be used to complete nearly any configuration management task imaginable.
Please check out Automating Terminal Tool Setup to see Ansible in action.