AWS CloudFormation vs. Perforce Puppet

Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the Cloning Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource. Management guide. For information virtual hardware, installed software cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information.

Incentivized

Most of the major issues that people had with the language have been addressed in Puppet 4 which primarily pertain to the limitations of the language and its ability to scale. It would be nice to allow for full ruby support as an unsupported option though so developers are able to reference their own data sources dynamically.

Incentivized

• IaC, transactional on top of that
• Support for "mainstream" general programming languages
• Sharable IaC "snippets" that can setup standardized environments for individuals quickly
• OOP techniques are available thanks to OOP languages

Incentivized

• Provides a reliable mechanism for deploying infrastructure-as-code, especially when integrated with source control (such as Git).
• Manages system configuration drift to provide greater stability and system up-time; the same configuration-as-code can be pushed out over and over.
• A strong asset when moving teams towards DevOps by providing development a way to take control of their own assets.

Incentivized

• Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
• Slow to create, delete or update.
• Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.

Incentivized

• Steep learning curve for first time users.
• The complexity can get a little overwhelming in a more collaborative deployment methodology across multiple platforms and data centers.
• Some external changes to Puppet like the new Puppet 4 architecture can cause considerable time consuming migration efforts especially if you have a lot of legacy classes and configuration that do not conform readily to the new design.

Incentivized

It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.

Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.

However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.

Incentivized

Puppet has top class support. You can simply mail them with their query and they will respond to your query in a timely manner. We do have enterprise license for puppet. Also there is a vibrant community for puppet out there. So even if you dont purchase a premium support option you can simply google your queries and get answers

Incentivized

Since the product I'm involved is primarily hosted on AWS we use CloudFormation but in some other products where we have hybrid cloud deployments we prefer Terraform which is opensource.

Incentivized

Puppet was selected before I joined the team, had it been my choice I would have much rather went with Chef as it has the ability to do things that Puppet has not yet added to their system such a the ability to quickly query what host currently are allowing puppet to maintain their files or the ability to run remote commands without having to include it in a manifest like Chef does with the knife command. Salt allows you to do similar things to the knife command that is included with Chef, and also allows you to transfer files quickly to multiple host at once with a short simple command.

Incentivized

• + We can standup a VPC in minutes
• - It took a lot of inital time to set up
• + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.

Incentivized

• With all the DevOps and automation that we have going on, we save a ton of time on the configuration of the server. It's safe to say that configuring servers via console or via UI is a thing of the past.
• We try to get all the things done by using a centralized repo (GitHub). Puppet is one tool that actually gets the actual work done.
• The small amount that we spent on purchasing premium Puppet is completely justified because of the time and effort that this tool actually helps us save.

Incentivized