Learning CFEngine 3: Automated system administration for sites of any size

by Diego Zamboni

Get up to speed on CFEngine 3, the open source configuration management software that enables you to automate everything from one-server shops to enterprise computer networks. This hands-on introduction shows you how to use CFEngine 3 to implement and manage and your IT infrastructure in a sustainable, scalable, and efficient manner.

Through numerous examples, you’ll learn how to use CFEngine to perform tasks such as user management, software installation, and security. You’ll also learn how to focus on higher-level issues of design, implementation and maintenance, knowing that CFEngine is handling the lower-level details for you automatically.


Discover how far you can go with system automation, using CFEngine
Become familiar with the software’s principles, components, and policy structure
Configure CFEngine step-by-step to perform routine tasks on your system
Specify custom machine configuration without making changes by hand
Get tricks and patterns that you can use in your own CFEngine policies
Maintain separate CFEngine environments for development, testing, production, or other uses

Genres: Technology

249 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 2011

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A better introduction than the official docs, but still a bit overwhelming. CFEngine vocabulary is weird and the "basics" section was more on theory than syntax and details of, say, bodies vs. bundles. It's hard to figure out what will work on a pre-3.5 installation: there's little on what version introduced certain features, and nothing on "this feature was present but buggy" (sadly all too common). Standard library is mixed in with base CFEngine, and there's no mention of the module interface. Not good, but the official docs are such a mess, and CFEngine is so powerful, that this is still valuable.

[Alain van Hoof · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read this is to understand Cfengine3