In embodiments, the present invention provides mechanisms and methods for making a plurality of configuration changes to a set of servers comprised of an administration server and one or more managed servers. These mechanisms and methods can enable a number of changes to be made to the configuration at once, i.e., in a batch. The ability of an administrator to make a number of changes to the configuration, validate the changes and then persist the changes to the servers is termed a “transaction based” change process. In such transaction based processing, embodiments process changes in batches, which enables embodiments to avoid failures in configuration changes that result in the machines being in a non-recoverable or unknown configuration state.