Puppet today unveiled a series of initiatives as part of a continuing campaign to make IT automation available pervasively across the enterprise.
Omri Gazitt, chief product officer for Puppet, said the first step in that effort is making it easier for IT organizations to discover what assets they need to manage. Puppet Discovery is an agentless tool through which organizations can monitor their IT environments continuously. Any changes or additions are captured immediately in a database.
Scheduled to be available in May, Puppet Discovery replaces a traditional configuration management database (CMDB) with a platform that more accurately reflects the state of the IT environment because it’s always up to date, Gazitt said.
Puppet is also extending the reach of its IT automation framework to include modules spanning platforms from Barracuda Networks, Cisco Systems and Nutanix, as well as the Azure cloud service from Microsoft.
Modules for Cisco ACI software-defined networks (SDNs) and Cisco Meraki wireless networks are now available, along with a private beta of a module for the Cisco IOS operating system widely employed on the Cisco network infrastructure.
Similarly, Puppet modules are now available for security and data protection offerings from Barracuda Networks and the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform developed by Nutanix.
Puppet, in the context of the cloud, is now adding a module for Azure Resource Manager, as well as adding support for Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) and the Microsoft Task Scheduler 2.0 application programming interface (API) used in Windows.
In related news, Microsoft, Barracuda Networks and Puppet also announced they are combining their respective capabilities to create an Azure Accelerator program to automate and secure mission-critical workloads. Organizations that participate in the program can get started at no cost, with free software from Puppet and Barracuda and no Microsoft Azure infrastructure charges while migrating workloads to Azure Cloud.
Other new members of the Puppet Technology Alliance Partner program include Lenovo and xMatters.
Finally, Puppet announced scheduled June availability of Continuous Delivery for Puppet Enterprise (PE), an update to Puppet Enterprise that includes role-based access control for Tasks, which can define node groups corresponding to business functions or units to limit who can run tasks within a specific node group. Puppet also has added Puppet Bolt Task Plans, which enable customers to orchestrate a set of tasks across thousands of Puppet Enterprise nodes using Puppet Orchestrator. Continuous Delivery for PE is based on a continuous delivery platform developed by Distelli that Puppet acquired last year.
Puppet Enterprise has also been enhanced with easier backup and recovery capabilities to automate disaster recovery and support for a Puppet Development Kit (PDK), which includes a new resource application programming interface (API) that Gazitt said can be used to create custom Puppet modules to automate the management of any platform.
In general, Gazitt noted that IT automation and DevOps increasingly are becoming synonymous. The biggest issue now, he said, is unifying all the independent silos of DevOps implementations that now span many enterprise organizations.
Of course, IT organizations can apply IT automation without necessarily embracing DevOps. But once an organizations begins to adopt DevOps, it’s pretty clear IT automation quickly becomes indispensable.
— Mike Vizard
