Following our previous blogs about Oracle and HashiCorp, we want to take a moment to highlight our third major partner: Puppet, the tool that simplifies the automation of IT infrastructure management. BRYXX established a close working relationship with Puppet early in its development, when it was still a young startup.
The relationship between BRYXX and Puppet has always been characterized by direct lines of communication and close collaboration. That remains true today, even after Puppet’s acquisition by Perforce. We maintain direct, personal contact with Puppet experts across key areas of the business, while Puppet also benefits from BRYXX’s vision and experience.
One example of this collaboration is our participation in Puppet’s Early Access program. This allows BRYXX to deploy new applications and features very early on, even before their official release date. We test the solutions, provide feedback, develop use cases, and get to evaluate them at client sites. BRYXX has also been an official Professional Services provider for Puppet for some time now, after completing a rigorous selection process.
Everything with an IP address
At BRYXX, we’re big fans of Puppet because both the company and its solutions are completely tool- and platform-agnostic. Puppet works on every operating system imaginable. Or as the company itself recently described it: “We configure everything that has an IP address.” That kind of flexibility is hugely important to BRYXX, given that the environments we manage for our clients are often built using various technologies.
Puppet software is available in both open source and enterprise versions. Although Puppet no longer offers the open source version itself, it continues under the name OpenVox. This community software is also fully compatible with Puppet.
Configuration, monitoring, and remediation
Some organizations consider it a barrier that Puppet works with agents, but in our view, this is actually an advantage, as it is these agents who constantly verify whether the systems still align with the intended configuration.
Puppet operates on the principle of desired state management: you define what the systems should look like, then Puppet automatically configures everything. In addition, many security and control mechanisms are built into Puppet’s software as standard, whereas other tools require additional customization to achieve this functionality.
Importantly, Puppet not only monitors the configuration but also provides remediation when the configuration deviates from the desired state or becomes redundant over time. For example, if you spin up a server with Puppet but then hardly use it, Puppet will not only suggest decommissioning it but also give you the option to immediately execute that command. This makes Puppet the only tool capable of realizing this kind of self-healing IT system.
Choosing the right solution
At BRYXX, we deliberately choose an IT-agnostic approach. This allows us to recommend the most suitable solution for every client and every situation. If Ansible turns out to be the better fit for your organization, then we’ll get to work with Ansible for you.
If Puppet is the best choice, BRYXX knows its offering and capabilities inside and out, and we’re ready to implement them for your organization. At the same time, we’ll act as your sounding board and work directly with Puppet to answer all your questions, even when it comes to tricky areas such as license renewals and associated rates.