The present disclosure relates to generating, updating, modifying, and otherwise managing configurations for virtual services on a cloud computing system. The present disclosure provides example implementations of a configuration management system and configuration handlers on respective server nodes that receive and process requests for modifying one or more configurations that manage operation of virtual services on the cloud. Systems described herein involve leveraging a hierarchical model of configuration characteristics to facilitate both large and small scale modifications. Moreover, the systems described herein leverage a persistent store on server nodes to identify how to update a current base configuration and sub-version as well as synchronize modifications across a set of server nodes.