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In this technical presentation we will cover the use of tools such as Capistrano, Puppet & Chef to script and automate the setup of server environments. We will begin by describing the problems associa...

In this technical presentation we will cover the use of tools such as Capistrano, Puppet & Chef to script and automate the setup of server environments. We will begin by describing the problems associated with differing server environments during the development of software written in PHP, explaining how differing software stacks can lead to unexpected defects. Most notably introducing risk to our projects during deployment from development environments, staging and production servers.

Based on real world experiences we will describe how "chef" can be used to reduce the requirement for individual developers to maintain their development environment. We will describe a scenario where the required knowledge to run exact replicas of the production servers during development is reduced. We will describe a solution where the technical architecture of the server and software stack can be defined and deployed to VMs or to physical or cloud based production hardware all using a scripted approach.