Puppet 2.5 propels ahead with Windows, big data support
The addition of Windows support to Puppet Enterprise 2.5 -- which debuted today -- is a huge leap forward for the management platform, which already counts Google, Twitter, Apple, NYSE, Match.com, Red Hat and Citrix among its 250 enterprise customers.
Version 2.5 also offers integration with Puppet Forge, which will give system administrators access to 250 ready-to-use configurations in the Puppet Forge online marketplace.
"UsingPuppet Enterprise 2.5’s integration with Puppet Forge, a system administrator can find and download a configuration module for MySQL and in minutes set-up fully-configured MySQL databases on multiple servers," the company announced in a statement released today.
The upgrade also offers support for big data. "Big Data for Infrastructure provides system administrators with the Puppet Data Library and access to comprehensive data on the who, what, where, when, and why of infrastructure changes," the company announced.
"These capabilities give them pro-active control over infrastructure change management, automated reports for IT compliance audits, and insights into how infrastructure changes impact service levels. Moreover, innovative companies like Boundary and Nodeable have built solutions leveraging this data to give system administrators additional tools for managing their environments.
Puppet Enterprise 2.5, which is based on the Puppet open source project, is a quick follow on to the 2.0 upgrade, which shipped last quarter with cloud management and provisioning capabilities.
New Windows support is by far the biggest improvement, one customer noted, in an email response.
"It enables us to use a common management tool across two of the most common OS platforms, Linux and Windows," Sean Millichamp, Senior Linux Architect at Secure-24 , a enterprise hosting and cloud provider. "This provides us with a single pane of glass to view the state of our managed server environment and a single place to deploy infrastructure configuration updates common to both platforms.
"Also, having Puppet Enterprise’s compliancy and inventory services available on both Linux and Windows provides a single view to easily look at the data and audit changes across both platforms," he said.
"Prior to Puppet we used a variety of tools and scripts (some developed in house) to automate and audit configurations," Millichamp added. "Puppet allowed us to replace those tools while delivering additional functionality we hadn’t previously enjoyed. The addition of the Windows support means we can leverage our existing internal expertise in Puppet to have a common platform and view across both environments in a single management tool instead of developing those views ourselves by tying together data from different tools on each platform.