Configuration drift
Configuration drift is the divergence between the state a system was declared to have and the state it actually has, caused by out-of-band changes.
What is configuration drift?
Configuration drift is the divergence between the state a system was declared to have and the state it actually has, caused by out-of-band changes.
Plain and technical
Drift happens when someone changes something directly (in a console or on a server) instead of changing the definition. Reality and the description stop matching, usually without anyone noticing.
Drift is detected by continuously comparing declared state against observed live state and reporting the differences. Continuous comparison matters because drift discovered at the next deployment is discovered by being overwritten, which is how emergency fixes made directly in production get silently reverted.
What it looks like in practice
Nearby vocabulary
GitOps
GitOps is an operating model in which a system desired state is declared in Git and an automated process continuously reconciles the running system to it.
Infrastructure as code
Infrastructure as code is the practice of defining infrastructure in versioned, machine-readable files rather than configuring it by hand.
Continuous delivery
Continuous delivery is the practice of keeping software in a state where any change that has passed verification could be released to production at any time.
How DevOpsArk handles configuration drift
More definitions
See these concepts in a running system
A 30-minute walkthrough against your own infrastructure rather than a slide about the theory.