[gfreeman]

What does CM stand for? Also can you recommend some CMs that you've had success with?

[olefoo]

Configuration Management - e.g. Puppet, Saltstack, Ansible, Chef; or if you're old school cfengine.

They are good at bringing systems to a known state; but not as good for cleaning systems up.

If not watched carefully, all of the cruft in your /etc directory will be ported to your CM because someone needs it.

[sleepycal]

Configuration manager, such as Puppet, Chef, Salt Stack etc.