DEVOPSdigest

Puppet announced updates to Puppet Enterprise making it easier and faster to automate complex infrastructure operations for improved application deployments, fewer errors and disruptions, and greater operational repeatability and efficiency.

With the summer release of Puppet Enterprise, customers can now use the thousands of open source and Puppet-built modules available on Puppet Forge as building blocks to quickly compose and manage plans through the Puppet Enterprise console. Platform, DevOps and other teams can now quickly expand automation into more far-reaching infrastructure use cases by uniquely mixing and matching imperative tasks with declarative model-based automation with enterprise-grade visibility and control.

“Application deployments are increasingly waiting on DevOps and platform teams to carry out complex sequences of infrastructure configuration, which, when done manually, also increases the risk of errors and disruption,” said Abby Kearns, Puppet CTO. “These teams start off making fast progress with basic automation tools, but hit a roadblock once requirements become more complex. Puppet now provides a growth path from the fast start of Puppet Bolt and Puppet Forge content to powerful orchestration workflows to deliver on our promise of continuous automation.”

Preparing infrastructure for an application release, for example, could include a task set for draining a load balancer, calling VMWare to provision an Apache server, applying the appropriate patch updates, configuring for the needs of the database, pause running services, install the database, change the state of the Apache server to accept connections, and hundreds of other routines, procedures and states.

This release includes pre-built patching task automation content for Windows and Linux systems together with a new user experience to quickly use and share patching automation within the needs and standards of the enterprise. A new OS Patching service is also now available to help customers standardize and scale their patching processes. Collectively these new capabilities will help enterprises improve compliance, security and stability by replacing time-consuming, error-prone manual steps done in stand-alone tools.

In addition to usability and scalability improvements, Puppet Enterprise also now includes an upgrade pre-check module that performs a readiness assessment and identifies potential risks, and what changes are needed before running an upgrade.