Configuration Management
Configuration management handles application settings, infrastructure parameters, and environment-specific values across development, staging, and production. Configuration determines how applications behave without code changes—database connections, API endpoints, feature flags, resource limits. The challenge: managing values across multiple formats (JSON, YAML, TOML, INI), environments (local, cloud, Kubernetes), and tools (Docker Compose, Terraform, CI/CD) while maintaining security and version control.
Every DevOps workflow touches configuration. Kubernetes uses YAML manifests. CI/CD pipelines consume JSON or YAML. Applications read appsettings.json, config.toml, or environment variables. Infrastructure-as-code processes configuration-as-code. Format fragmentation is real—a single .NET project might use JSON (app settings), YAML (CI/CD), TOML (tooling), and CSV (exports). Each format has different syntax, validation, and failure modes.
Key challenges: JSON lacks comments. YAML breaks on whitespace. TOML is explicit but smaller ecosystem. Dev configs differ from production, requiring secrets management (Azure Key Vault, HashiCorp Vault, Kubernetes Secrets). Config errors surface at runtime—schema validation catches issues early. LLMs struggle with format syntax; YAML’s implicit conversions (NO → false) break AI-generated configs.
Configuration management intersects with DevOps, dotnet, and bestpractices (validation, secrets, environment separation).
