The configuration management tool supports not only a bare metal environment or a VM, but also cloud infrastructure. If you need to create and configure the network, storage, and VM on the cloud, the configuration management tool helps to set up the cloud infrastructure on the configuration file, as shown in the following diagram:

Configuration management has some advantages compared to a Standard Operation Procedure (SOP). It helps to maintain a configuration file via VCS, which can trace the history of all of the revisions.

It also helps to replicate the environment. For example, let's say we want to create a disaster recovery site in the cloud. If you follow the traditional approach, which involves using the SOP to build the environment manually, it's hard to predict and detect human or operational errors. On the other hand, if we use the configuration management tool, we can build an environment in the cloud quickly and automatically.