Whether you use Chef, Puppet, or just basic shell scripting, there seems to be no clear way to incrementally develop and test scripts to provision a system. In this talk I'll introduce using local virtual machines managed by Vagrant as a way to achieve this, shortening the feedback loop and increasing productivity and confidence of configuration management script development.
Google makes extensive use of open source software in running Google - both making use and contributing back to that. By using and contributing to open source software, we have been able to fundamentally change how managing an enterprise-size work force and their computing needs.