The Future of In-container Configuration Management

IT has undergone many technology disruptions over the last 30 years, from bare metal to VMs, to cloud and most recently containers. Each generation is bringing along new value propositions and enabling new applications, while at the same time making some technologies obsolete or less relevant.

The promised value propositions of containers are around speed and portability. By taking a historical perspective in considering the new value propositions and current application of containers, we will look at what role we might expect configuration management to play in managing containers from the inside. We will also look at which qualities a configuration management tool needs to satisfy in order to fill the needs of the container generation.

Diego Zamboni is a computer scientist, consultant, author, programmer, and sysadmin who works as Senior Security Advisor and Product Manager at CFEngine. He has more than 20 years of experience in system administration and security and has worked in both the applied and theoretical sides of the computer science field. He holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University, has worked as a sysadmin at a supercomputer center, as a researcher at the IBM Zurich Research Lab, and as a consultant at HP Enterprise Services. He is the author of the book "Learning CFEngine 3," published by O'Reilly Media. He lives in Queretaro, Mexico, with his wife and two daughters.