Desired State Configuration using Puppet Enterprise
Today’s datacenters are full of heterogenous platforms and there are a variety of technologies starting right from a mix of operating systems, databases, middleware and front-end web applications. It is a mammoth task to maintain a standardized environment and manual efforts to maintain configurations prove to be insufficient. This is where automation kicks in. Due to advances in Technology, now we have tools for automating configuration management, who probe the in-scope systems to adjust system parameters in response to situations. We have something called as Desired State Configuration (DSC) and we must understand what DSC means prior to studying how Puppet Enterprise helps automate DSC.
Desired State Configuration (DSC) is an essential part of the configuration, management and maintenance of Windows-based servers. It allows a script to specify the configuration of the machine using a scripted model in a simple standard way that is easy to maintain and understand.
In line with the above definition, logically there must be a Configuration Repository which will contain the desired configuration state definitions. This repository will be used as a reference by the Puppet Master Server and will be pushed to the in-scope clients via secured Puppet scripts.
An important requirement is that all the clients must be time-synched with the master server. This may be implemented using Network Time Protocol (NTP). As the picture above depicts, the puppet master receives the current state information (Facts) from the clients, and in turn, pushes a catalogued configuration into the clients.
This helps maintain a standard configuration across a range of platforms. Here it is notable to state that Puppet Enterprise supports the following OS flavours:
Operating system Versions Architecture
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, 7 x86_64
i386 for 5, 6
IBM z System for 6, 7
ppc64le for 7
CentOS 5, 6, 7 x86_64
i386 for 5, 6
Oracle Linux 5, 6, 7 x86_64
i386 for 5, 6
Scientific Linux 5, 6, 7 x86_64
i386 for 5, 6
SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server
11 (SP1/SP2), 12
(SP1/SP2)
x86_64
i386 for 11
IBM z System for 6, 7
ppc64le for 12
Solaris 10 (update 9 or
later), 11
SPARC
i386
Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 16.10 x86_64
i386
ppc64le for 16.04
Fedora 24, 25, 26 x86_64
i386
Debian Wheezy (7), Jessie
(8), Stretch (9)
x86_64
i386
Microsoft Windows
(Server OS)
2008, 2008R2,
2012, 2012R2,
2012R2 core, 2016
x86_64
i386
Microsoft Windows
(Consumer OS)
Vista, 7, 8.1, 10
x86_64
i386
Mac OS X 10.10, 10.11,
macOS Sierra
x86_64
AIX 5.3, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2 Power
Amazon Linux 2017.03 (using
packages for RHEL
6)
Supported Platforms for Puppet Enterprise — Source: www.puppet.com
Puppet Enterprise automates the provisioning, configuration, and ongoing management an IT infrastructure to help save organizations time, money, and effort.
Puppet enables IT professionals to improve productivity by automating previously manual, error-prone routine tasks, helping eliminate time spent configuring, deploying, troubleshooting, and managing an entire IT infrastructure and allocating that saved time to more strategic initiatives.
Puppet provides IT teams with quantifiable benefits that enable a digital transformation to a leaner IT infrastructure with efficient processes that enable higher levels of productivity.
With Puppet Enterprise, individual infrastructure pain points are easily identified and iteratively addressed to constantly. expand the use of automation throughout most of an application’s lifecycle and its usage
throughout different areas of the infrastructure stack. Puppet provides thousands of modules of prewritten configuration code that IT teams can leverage to get up and running faster and more securely.
Interestingly, Puppet Enterprise can be widely leveraged to implement the concept of DevOps. Puppet can define infrastructure as code, manage multiple servers, and enforce system configuration.
To conclude, Puppet Enterprise automates Configuration Management and enables administrators and developers to focus on other high priority tasks.
