An Intepretive Case Study in Con guration Management Systems

Abstract

Several studies in the recent decade has shown that operator mistakes are the most common cause of Internet service failures. Among these, miscon guration is the most common one. Several con guration management systems exist to alleviate this problem. However, there is little or no amount of systematic analysis of research on said systems. Using data from ve case studies of di erent con guration management systems, we analyzed core di erences and similarities in approaches to con guration management. We nd that Con guration Management Systems address either the problem of automating installation and con guration, or that of analyzing and verifying con guration correctness. Qualitatively we nd that there is a relationship between these two approaches and the maturity level of software and services.