Configuration management tool to facilitate managing our (Linux) cluster head nodes, other Linux servers, and our Linux desktops. Works with other OSes (MacOS, Windows), but we'll first focus on Linux.
http://docs.puppetlabs.com/#puppetpuppet
Watch 5 minute video:
http://info.puppetlabs.com/download-learning-puppet-VM.html
Per "Puppet 3 Beginner's Guide", By: John Arundel (April 17, 2013), [read full book for free via CU Library's Safari subscription]:
Configuration management tools: This is roughly the situation we have now. Several different CM systems have been developed over the years, with new ones coming along all the time, but only a few have achieved significant market share. At the time of writing, at least for UNIX-like systems, these CM systems are Puppet, Chef, and CFEngine. There really isn't much to choose between these different systems. They all solve more or less the same problems--the ones we saw earlier in this chapter--in more or less the same way. Some people prefer the Puppet way of doing things; some people are more comfortable with Chef, and so on. But essentially, these, and many other CM systems, are all great solutions to the CM problem, and it's not very important which one you choose as long as you choose one.
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Infrastructure as code: Once we start writing programs to configure machines, we get some benefits right away. We can adopt the tools and techniques that regular programmers--who write code in Ruby or Java, for example--have used for years:
Powerful editing and refactoring tools
Version control
Tests
Pair programming
Code reviews
This can make us more agile and flexible as system administrators, able to deal with fast-changing requirements and deliver things quickly to the business. We can also produce higher-quality, more reliable work.
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http://bitfieldconsulting.com/puppet-vs-chef
http://www.opscode.com/chef/#which-chef
https://cfengine.com/what-is-cfengine
-Oliver.