[btmspox]

Do it early, for many reasons. I worked as a systems administrator for startups before we wrote Chef, and I wouldn't go back to managing infrastructure by hand.

A few reasons:

* You don't have to maintain that database manually, Chef collects and stores node information for you.

* If you've already automated building out your servers, you're all set when you need more of them.

* The recipes document your systems, so if you "get hit by a bus" someone else can figure out how the bits get around.

* When your datacenter burns down, you can rebuild quickly from bare metal, a chef repository, and backups of your application data.

Also see this article written by Jesse Robbins, one of the Opscode founders, but before Chef existed:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/10/operations-is-a-competitive...