Puppet Enteprise is an IT automation and configuration management solution that enables users to manage and automate infrastructure and complex workflows. The vendor states Puppet Enterprise combines both model‑based and task-based capabilities in a way that enables organizations to scale their multi-cloud infrastructure as their automation footprint grows, with more flexibility from both agent-based and agentless capabilities.
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vRealize Configuration Manager (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
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VMware's vRealize Configuration Manager (formerly vCenter Configuration Manager) was a change and configuration management software solution. VMware announced the end of the product's availability in January, 2020.
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.
VMware vCenter Configuration Manager comes in very handy for engineers while providing the RCA of an issue or trying to do the troubleshooting, It allows to review the logs all in one place. Its change management feature allows pushing and reviewing the changes on several systems without the need of logging into individual systems. VMware vCenter Configuration Manager has provided a convenient way for the Patching and compliance of systems.
Active monitoring of Syslog and notifications based upon the matching conditions.
Change management- Changes can be pushed to several system from one place. It also keeps the record of what changes and who made the change even if the changes has not been made through VMware vCenter Configuration Manager.
Robust reporting feature- Enhanced filters features and report generation in excel format presents the data in readable and to the point.
Integration with ticketing tool further ensures that changes are approved before implementation.
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.
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
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.
Improve operational effectiveness by continuously auditing configurations of the VMware infrastructure and Windows, Linux and UNIX operating systems. Accelerate the adoption of virtualization and cloud computing for business-critical applications by addressing security and compliance concerns.
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.
