🐾 What Is Puppet?
Puppet is a declarative configuration management tool used to automate the provisioning, configuration, and management of servers. It’s especially popular in large-scale enterprise environments.
🧠 How Puppet Works
- You define the desired state of your infrastructure using Puppet manifests (written in Puppet DSL, a Ruby-like language).
- Puppet ensures that the actual system state matches the desired state.
- It uses a client-server model (Puppet Master and Puppet Agent), though it also supports agentless operation via Bolt.
🧾 Example Puppet Manifest
package { 'nginx':
ensure => installed,
}
service { 'nginx':
ensure => running,
enable => true,
}This tells Puppet:
- Make sure Nginx is installed
- Ensure the service is running and enabled on boot
🧩 Puppet vs Ansible vs Terraform
| Feature | Puppet | Ansible | Terraform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Puppet DSL | YAML | HCL |
| Approach | Declarative | Imperative (mostly) | Declarative |
| State Tracking | Yes (resource catalog) | No | Yes (state file) |
| Agent Required | Yes (default) | No | No |
| Use Case | Configuration management | Configuration & orchestration | Infrastructure provisioning |
🔐 Security & Compliance
Puppet is often used in environments where compliance and auditability are critical. It supports:
- Role-based access control
- Node classification
- Reporting and auditing
🚀 When to Use Puppet
- Large-scale environments with many servers
- Strict compliance and audit requirements
- Long-lived infrastructure with complex configurations
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