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Mon, 16 Feb 2026 10:41:06 +0000
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CfgMgmtCamp 2026: IT Architecture

This post is part of a series of talks presented at CfgMgmtCamp 2026. Please see CfgMgmtCamp for all other talks.

Composing systems with Ansible, Podman, and bootc

Speaker: Fabio Alessandro “Fale” Locati

Slides: Presentation

Video: YouTube

As organizations increasingly adopt containerization, Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for orchestrating clusters. However, for many teams, the complexity and operational overhead of managing a Kubernetes environment can be daunting.
In this talk, we’ll explore a practical alternative built on open standards and simple tools: using:

Ansible for automation

Podman for container management

bootc for the operating system.
While Ansible and Podman are very established technologies, bootc is an emerging technology that reimagines how systems are built and updated by transforming container images into fully bootable, atomic operating systems. It brings the simplicity, consistency, and automation of container workflows all the way down to the OS layer.
You’ll learn how to use Ansible to define and manage containerized applications and services, leverage Podman’s daemonless architecture for secure deployments, and then go one step further by using bootc to build and manage image-based operating systems directly from your container
We’ll wrap up with a live demo creating podman containers using Ansible on a bootc system, showing how these tools together can deliver lightweight, reproducible, and maintainable infrastructure in a simple way.

Building an Infrastructure Automation Platform using Platform Engineering

Speaker: Niklas Werker

Slides: Presentation

Video: Talk was not recorded.

Nowadays, everybody seems to be talking about Platform Engineering. The world of software development and cloud native technologies have been flooded with new tools and frameworks under the label of Platform Engineering. This talk aims to unpack these technologies by exploring their underlying principles and addressing the following questions:

What is Platform Engineering?

What are the core principles that define Platform Engineering and differentiate it from traditional DevOps?

How do Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Configuration Management interplay with Platform Engineering?

Can we build platforms tailored to the needs of infrastructure automation developers and how would they look like?

The session concludes with a live demo of an Infrastructure Automation Platform that combines the following technologies:

Backstage

Ansible

HashiCorp Vault

GitLab

Eclipse Che

This demonstration showcases a practical approach to architecting, building and maintaining an Infrastructure Automation Platform - an approach that can be adapted to platforms composed out of other tech stacks as well. Finally, we will take a glimpse in the future of possible platform capabilities and how they might reshape the way we collaborate.

Building a self-contained, zero-dependency deployment with Ansible

Speaker: Daniel Podwysocki

Slides: Presentation

Video: YouTube

This talk will show you how to finally solve bootstrapping your infrastructure/laptop/coffee machine anywhere.

I will show you how I’ve solved packaging Ansible into a self-contained, offline-capable installer that can run anywhere, with zero dependencies - no docker or other OCI runtime, no python, just a minimal linux box.

The Day Two Problem: Examining Decades of Infrastructure Automation Evolution

Speaker: Yair Etziony

Slides: Presentation

Video: Talk was not recorded.

Day One operations focus on initial deployment, provisioning resources, and achieving operational state. Day Two operations encompass ongoing lifecycle management: updates, drift correction, decommissioning, and sustained operational health.

The evolution from Puppet and Chef to Ansible, Terraform, Pulumi, and platforms like Crossplane represents decades of innovation in infrastructure automation. Each generation has advanced deployment capabilities, yet consistent patterns emerge in post-deployment operational challenges.

This talk explores the intricate transition from deployment to sustained operations, a journey marked by recurring themes in the evolution of configuration management. We’ll dissect how different approaches handle this transition, exploring operational challenges across infrastructure layers from bare metal through hypervisors to cloud platforms.

Through comprehensive historical analysis, we’ll delve into questions such as: Why do similar operational challenges persist across different generations of tooling? How do state management approaches compare to distributed coordination systems? What can we learn from examining infrastructure as dynamic systems rather than static code?

Additionally, we’ll explore the relationship between infrastructure automation tools and observability platforms, investigating how the separation between these domains affects operational visibility and decision-making during Day Two operations.

You’ll gain insights into approaches to infrastructure management that address the complete operational lifecycle, leaving you prepared to tackle the challenges ahead.

Check out the other sessions at CfgMgmtCamp 2026 using the links below:

CfgMgmtCamp 2026: Content Development and Collection Maintenance

CfgMgmtCamp 2026: AI and Automation

CfgMgmtCamp 2026: IT Architecture

CfgMgmtCamp 2026: Integration and Tooling

CfgMgmtCamp 2026: Ansible Core 2.19

CfgMgmtCamp 2026: Ansible Ecosystem

CfgMgmtCamp 2026: Community and Contributor Summit

Here are links to all the talks on YouTube as well as related forum discussions:

All Ansible talks on YouTube

All CfgMgmtCamp Forum Posts

CfgMgmtCamp 2026 Event Post

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