Commonly Used Tool for Maintaining System Configurations

C.

Puppet is a commonly used tool for maintaining system configurations based on policies, and done so from a centralized authority.

The commonly used tool for maintaining system configurations is Puppet (Option C). Puppet is an open-source configuration management tool that automates the provisioning, configuration, and management of computer systems. It is widely used by system administrators and DevOps engineers to maintain the desired state of large-scale systems, ensuring that they remain consistent and predictable.

Puppet uses a declarative language to describe the desired state of a system, and its agent-based architecture allows it to apply those configurations consistently across a large number of systems. Puppet provides a centralized management console for administrators to define and enforce policies across their infrastructure, as well as a reporting system to track compliance and identify issues.

Maestro (Option A), Orchestrator (Option B), and Conductor (Option D) are not commonly used tools for maintaining system configurations. Maestro is a cloud orchestration tool from IBM, Orchestrator is a workflow automation tool from Microsoft, and Conductor is an open-source workflow orchestration platform from Netflix. While these tools may be used in conjunction with configuration management tools like Puppet, they are not designed specifically for that purpose.