There’s a brand-new version of Puppet Enterprise, the popular tool for automating IT infrastructure management. This release introduces some great new features and improvements. And don’t worry if you haven’t had the chance to check it out yet — here, we’ll take a deep dive into the most important advances . . . and they might just save you a lot of money!
The Puppet open source community is constantly tinkering with its tools, fixing bugs, launching new modules and features, and so on. This dedicated work regularly results in a new version, such as the recently released Puppet Enterprise 2023.7 and Puppet Enterprise Advanced. Let’s take a look at the most important innovations.
More tools in one new package
Do you combine Puppet Enterprise with Continuous Delivery for Puppet Enterprise (CD4PE)? Or maybe you use Puppet Enterprise with Puppet Comply, for compliance enforcement and vulnerability impact? These tools are now embedded in the new version of Puppet Enterprise, under Continuous Delivery and Security Compliance Management respectively. So from now on you’ll have all the functionality of CD4PE and Puppet Comply right there in Puppet Enterprise, without spending an extra penny.
The new Puppet Enterprise Advanced offers all the features of Puppet Enterprise, as well as two additional tools. Security Compliance Enforcement automatically enforces basic infrastructure security rules according to the CIS benchmarks and the DISA Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG). And Impact Analysis gives you a precise insight into the impact code changes will have on your IT infrastructure.
Deploy code while maintaining control
The new Puppet Enterprise and Puppet Enterprise Advanced further improve a number of existing features, including lockless code deploys. In the past, when you deployed new code, you couldn’t send requests to the Puppet server, so you temporarily lost control. Of course that only took a few seconds each time, but if you deploy code dozens of times a day, it adds up over time.
All that has changed with lockless code deploys. Puppet no longer overwrites entire directories when you deploy new code. From now on, the system will instead adjust the code in the existing directories. In the meantime, you can continue to send requests to the Puppet server. While lockless code deploys have been possible for some time, now you can enable and disable the feature on the main server and fine-tune its performance.
Save on licensing
So we’ve looked at some of the most important substantive changes, but just as exciting is the fact that you can save a bunch on your licensing costs with the latest versions of Puppet Enterprise and Puppet Enterprise Advanced.
If you’re a company that automates your data and application platform using Puppet Enterprise, you might be using impact analysis (via CD4PE) or Security Compliance Enforcement Modules (via Comply) as well. Until now you had to buy a separate license for each tool. But from now on that won’t be necessary, giving you an immediate saving. Today you pay $260,42 per node per year (listprice) with Puppet Enterprise in combination with CD4PE and Comply, but these charges are being scrapped for new version. If you use Puppet Enterprise Advanced, you’ll save $26,04 per node per year because the two extra tools are now included free of charge. For example, you’ll pay a total of $130,2 less for a Puppet environment with five nodes. That’s a saving of 11% if you choose Puppet Enterprise Advanced, in comparison with the old license version.
Something for your organization?
So you can see the advantages of the new Puppet products, both for your IT infrastructure management and for your budget. Why not get in touch so we can chat about the specific benefits for your organization? Some companies will be able to make the switch all by themselves, while others will need to call on a partner who knows all the ins and outs of Puppet, especially those operating larger IT environments. Either way, you can count on us to help you make the most of Puppet.