DEVOPSdigest

Puppet announced a number of new products and updates to existing offerings.

Recently, Puppet acquired Distelli, an innovative continuous delivery platform for developers and enterprises to expand automation across the entire software delivery lifecycle. Now, Puppet is introducing Distelli’s products into Puppet’s automaton portfolio:

- Puppet Pipelines for Applications provides continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) capabilities for traditionally packaged applications.

- Puppet Pipelines for Containers, a platform for continuously delivering container-based applications across multiple Kubernetes clusters running on any cloud, or on-premises.

- Puppet Container Registry, an open source container registry that provides an easy way for software teams to host Docker images within their infrastructure and get a unified view of all their images stored in local and remote repositories.

Puppet Enterprise 2017.3 also includes major enhancements:

- Package Inspector: Makes it even easier to browse and search for packages discovered on nodes connected to Puppet Enterprise. Now you can quickly determine whether a package is already managed by Puppet Enterprise, and if so, identify its location and remediate any known vulnerabilities with Task Management.

- Puppet 5 Platform: The components of the core Puppet platform — Puppet Agent, Puppet Server and PuppetDB — have now moved to a more coordinated release model, with compatibility guarantees and consistent versioning among them. This enables customers to download, implement and upgrade the Puppet platform more easily without requiring additional testing and troubleshooting.

- Configuration Data: This new capability, Configuration Data, improves code reusability and makes it easier to configure nodes using either the node classifier or Hiera from the user interface.

- Japanese language support: Japanese language support has been enhanced to include additional translations of Task Management, module READMEs for Apache, Azure, and PostgreSQL, error and informational messages displayed when using the MySQL module, the text-based installer used to install Puppet Enterprise, the Learning VM, and the Code Manager user guide.

In addition, new offerings with Splunk, Google Cloud and Arm, plus new Technology Alliance Partners, make it easier for joint customers to spread automation across their organizations.

- New alliance with Google Cloud: Puppet recently announced a new collaboration that enables Puppet customers to quickly adopt Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services, including its advanced machine learning and data analytics capabilities, while reducing IT costs and gaining the agility and flexibility of the cloud. Customers are now able to leverage a set of Google-developed modules that automate the provisioning, configuration, and ongoing management of GCP services to help Puppet customers quickly and effectively take advantage of GCP, including: Google Cloud Spanner, Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Google Stackdriver. Puppet Tasks are now included in several Google Cloud modules, including Google Compute Engine, Google Container Engine, Google Cloud Storage, and Google Cloud SQL.

- New Splunk Partnership: Splunk and Puppet have partnered to offer complementary solutions that address the need for real-time analysis and automation to help organizations transform their business and achieve success. This collaboration has resulted in a new integration new app and new technical add-on, available as the Splunk ITSI Module for Puppet Enterprise and the Splunk App and Add-On for Puppet Enterprise. The new Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) integration gives Splunk users the ability to take immediate action with the power of Puppet as the underlying action engine to remediate any vulnerability concerns without leaving Splunk, leading to the elimination of manual steps and faster delivery.

- New partners for DevOps: Puppet has added eleven important partners as part of its Technology Alliance Partner Program (TAPP): Barracuda, CloudPassage, Conjur/CyberArk, Cumulus Networks, Electric Cloud, F5, Intelliment Security, Onyx Point, Splunk, Praecipio Consulting, and Sensu.

- Collaboration with Arm: Arm technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Arm technology is enabling intelligence in over 100 billion devices today and securely powering products from the sensor to the smartphone to the supercomputer. In collaboration with Arm, later this year Puppet will release and support a new agent to manage infrastructure built on the 64-bit Arm architecture.

Puppet continues to invest in the cloud and container ecosystem with new offerings that enable customers to migrate to the cloud and adopt containers.

- New Blueshift modules: Puppet remains committed to helping enterprises adopt next generation technologies.

- Kubernetes module: Installs and configures Kubernetes in a secure and highly reliable way.

- Helm module: Installs, configures and manages the Helm package manager, and enables users to manage applications running on Kubernetes.

- Docker module: The new Docker module includes major enhancements, including support for Puppet Code Manager, Docker Swarm mode and Docker Secrets.

- Kream tool: A new open source tool that enables users to install and manage Kubernetes and Helm, and build a local development cluster.

- Updates to Puppet Azure module: The Puppet Azure module has been updated to include enhanced Disk storage and networking support and support for Azure tags.