Ask HN: Configuration management tools

[carbonmachine]

We only have two servers, both Ubuntu, and I'd like to use some piece of config management software to get the required software installed and configured. I've dabbled with Chef and Puppet, but both seem very complex for my simple needs.

I'm tempted to use fabric because most of the tasks I need to do are just running apt-get or pip and then replacing the contents of config files with my own data. My end goal is just to be able to bring up a server quickly for testing or other purposes. Fabric seems to be the simplest option, but I'm not sure if it's really made for installing web servers, databases, and getting said software configured correctly.

I'd be very appreciative of any advice or experiences anyone may have to offer.

[edwhitesell]

Check out Ansible. It's agentless and does everything over SSH. It's great for simple things like running apt-get on a number of servers and far more complicated things like deploying instances in EC2 (and configuring them after they are up).