How to properly organize the configuration of server groups?

Question

linux

There is a zoo of about 5 node types.
How is it customary in 2016 to automate the application of configurations? As far as I understand, the most popular solution is Ansible.
Actually the question is, are there systems for automatically launching playbooks, for example, after rebooting one or a group of nodes? Or do you still need to fence the fence from heartbeat or cron scripts?

Answer 1

Ansible is a good solution, I also recommend looking at saltstack - saltstack.com , the pull model helps a lot in some cases.
>Actually, the question is, are there systems for automatically launching playbooks, for example, after rebooting one or a group of nodes?
Please clarify, when rebooting a node, it needs to be reconfigured again? Ansible in the simplest case installs packages, stuffs configs, etc, that is, it does actions that do not need to be repeated during reboot.