DEVOPSdigest

Puppet announced new additions to its partner ecosystem, including new collaborations and innovations with Barracuda, Cisco, Microsoft and Nutanix, to extend pervasive automation across on-premises and cloud environments.

“At Puppet, we strive to provide our customers with the technology breadth and depth they need to be successful on their journey to pervasive automation,” said Omri Gazitt, CPO, Puppet. “We are deeply committed to integrating with what our customers already have. The investments that we’re making in our partner ecosystem deliver on Puppet’s vision of empowering people to do more of what they love by helping them automate manual, error-prone processes across traditional infrastructure, cloud, containers, networking, and application development.”

New Azure and Windows automation innovations include:

- Auto-generated Azure ARM module. Puppet’s new auto-generated Azure ARM module helps customers adopt and manage new Azure resources and services as soon as they’re available. It can manage any resource and service supported by Azure Resource Manager today and as new resources are added, the module will automatically update to include them.

- DSC Lite module. Advanced users of Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) will have the ability to easily manage even more of their DSC resources, including class-based and custom DSC resources with Puppet’s new DSC Lite module. The DSC Lite module is a streamlined alternative to Puppet’s original DSC module for users that require additional flexibility.

- Windows Scheduled Tasks module. The new Scheduled Tasks module supports Microsoft's Task Scheduler 2.0 API, giving customers the ability to define more sophisticated triggers and scheduling options.

New Azure Accelerator Program: Puppet is working with Microsoft and Barracuda to create an accelerated migration program to help customers migrate their workloads to the cloud. The Azure Accelerator program offers a way to automate and manage mission-critical workloads while addressing the complexities of security, privacy and compliance concerns. Participating customers can get started at no cost with software from Puppet and Barracuda, and with no Microsoft Azure infrastructure charges during their migration.

Agentless management of Cisco devices: Puppet has had a longstanding collaborative relationship with Cisco to bring modern automation and DevOps practices to networking teams. Puppet and Cisco have worked closely to develop new solutions to help organizations automate even more of their Cisco networks.

- Cisco IOS XE Module Private Beta Release: Many customers use Puppet to manage configuration of enterprise networking devices to increase network agility. The private beta release of Puppet’s Cisco IOS XE module gives customers early access and input into the module’s functionality, including support for specific devices and resources. The Cisco IOS XE module currently enables agentless management of Cisco Catalyst (IOS XE) switches. Customers can use this to rapidly and securely configure their Catalyst switching Infrastructure and ensure configuration compliance, thereby reducing errors caused by manual management. Puppet Enterprise customers can request access to this private beta by emailing networkingbeta@puppet.com.

- Cisco ACI module: Cisco Application Infrastructure (ACI) is Cisco’s turnkey data center SDN solution. Cisco’s ACI module enables customers to manage Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) configurations with Puppet, enhancing customers’ ability to deploy and manage Cisco ACI. The module will be available on the Puppet Forge in May.

- Cisco Meraki module: The new Cisco Meraki module for Puppet lets you define Meraki organization administrators across all of your networks and across multiple organizations, a task that can be tedious for large IT organizations with complex permissions such as service providers or large IT organizations. Customers are demanding more power, and the module will eventually enable Puppet to manage switch port configurations and control firewall policies across every Meraki cloud-managed device. The module will be available this month and will be an ongoing open source project supported by Cisco’s fastest growing developer community. More details will be shared on the Meraki community.meraki.com and meraki.io.

"Many of our customers use Puppet today to manage the compute resources in their data center. Based on customer feedback, we built the Cisco ACI module in collaboration with Puppet,” said Mike Cohen, Sr. Director Product Management, Data Center Group, Cisco. “This module enables joint customers to consistently deploy and manage Cisco ACI fabric alongside the rest of their Puppet-managed infrastructure, giving them greater automation and visibility into their networks.”

Puppet partners with leading cloud, networking and security companies to make it easier for joint customers to scale automation across their organizations. Barracuda, Lenovo, Nutanix and Xmatters are now part of Puppet’s Technology Alliance Partner program. New modules from Barracuda and Nutanix make automation even more pervasive with additional support for networking, hybrid cloud management and app-level orchestration. Joint customers can rely on Puppet and our partner ecosystem to help scale their automation success more broadly across their estates.