Between any larger number of systems, managing the configuration of these systems requires a management utility that offers enough features so that you can easily classify systems, distinct different services and distribute arbitrary files or directory trees amongst them in a consistent matter. This ensures all your systems comply to a standard you distribute from one or more locations, including source control management for your administrators to keep track of changes.

Management utilities include CFEngine, and puppet. In this standard, we use puppet for it's security, reliability, the flexibility of it's manifests and modularity.