There is no way I am aware of to do both at the same time. Configurations and packages are managed separately. Making sure all 5 ( or 100, or 1000) systems have the same configuration files should not be too hard. <ol><li>put all of the configuration files you want to maintain in a configuration channel </li><li>use the System Set Manager to deploy the files to all the machines.</li><li>difference counts will be displayed in the 'Configs' column of the systems overview page. </li></ol>For your 5 systems you can use the profile compare feature in (Systems->Software->Packages->Profiles) but this only works for one system at a time. The kickstarting feature described by Ian would work for multiple systems at a time during initial deployment but not after. As far as I know there is no good way to make sure a 1000 systems have the same packages installed. Somebody could install a package and as long as there is not a more up to date version in one of the subscribed channels I would never know. Somebody could remove pacakges and I would never know. Is there a package profile compare in SSM I am not aware of ?