I guess I would ask about scriptable tools and APIs that are similar in *intent* to cfengine and Puppet.
I don't have a problem with Windows-specific tools, but there's a conception that all Windows tools require you to visit 500 screens if you want to make the same change on 500 systems? And that's no longer the case?
GroupPolicy is the closest Microsoft really gets to flat-file distributed systems management. Their Advanced Desktop Management Pack (an unfortunately un-free add-on) introduces the idea of propose-review-approve-publish to the Group Policy management process. It is designed around Change Management processes, but it also functions as a revision-control system.
Since GPOs can be used to modify the registry, the contents of some files (the functionality is limited), and fire off pre-defined scripts, you can do an awful lot with them. The GPO directory and file format does not lend itself to hand editing in a text editor, which is why the GPO Editor relies on vendor provided and user-generated schema files to define the interface. Once you've driven over the learning curve, they can be a VERY powerful tool.
The logic guts of StackOverflow.com are Windows (the data-shuffling guts are Linux though), and I know the sysadmins over there are using GPOs to do a lot of their configuration work and have a suite of PowerShell scripts to handle the rest of it. As I understand it, provisioning a new webserver for the load-balance pool is almost completely automated now and may be totally automatic.
- Greg Riedesel
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