⚙️ Configuration as Code

Puppet · Ansible · Terraform
— What's the difference and when to use what? —

FinistDevs · 2026

Arnaud Prémel-Cabic

Tech Lead @ OVHCloud

arnaud.premel-cabic@ovhcloud.com

"It works on my server."

Or: why doesn't it work here, when it works everywhere else?

You have a server. It works.

Great.

You have 10 servers.

Still manageable… but every small change means 10 SSH sessions, 10 vim edits, 10 chances to make a mistake.

Now you have 100 servers.

Some 2 years old. Some a couple of months. Some freshly provisioned.
None of them are exactly alike.

Each one is unique. Unreproducible. Undocumented.

Welcome to Snowflake Hell.

This is fine

Configuration drift is silent… until it isn't.

Prod breaks on a Tuesday. You can't reproduce the bug locally. You can't scale reliably. You can't onboard a new server without fear.

What if your infrastructure was just… code?

Yes, even your AI assistant can write it. But you still need to understand what it deploys.

Configuration as Code

Managing infrastructure through machine-readable files, stored in version control.

Reproducible  ·  Versionable  ·  Auditable