posted by mpdehaan on April 29, 2010 11:34 AM

I've heard on many occasions that Java applications are deployed 'differently' than other applications, that they are difficult, and they need Java specific management tools. Ultimately when you're managing a datacenter, you need to be able to manage applications regardless of the source language. Using administration tools that only manage one type of application or code base means an admin needs a sledgehammer in his arsenal, as well as a ball peen hammer. One tool should be sufficient and can make everyone's life easier.

The ultimate open source sledgehammer (chainsaw?) in today's datacenter automation world is Puppet. Built to be cross-platform, it works on most Linux and Unix based operating systems (including OS X), and will be taking on Windows support in the near future. It is a model driven solution that requires no coding knowledge to use. The Java community has long known the power of cross-platform tools, and systems administration tools should work the same way. If I want to create a user, do I need to know the differences between user creation on OS X and Linux? Not really, I'd just like to specify the attributes and share the same deployment instructions. Puppet helps you do this.

Puppet allows for centralized management of distributed datacenters, with many options present to account for variance in configurations and roles (queue buzzwords like "heterogenous", "geographic affinity", "cloud", and "facebook"). It allows for the definition of classes of machines ("foo.example.org" is a "database-server"), and mapping what machines belong in what classes. There are mechanisms for assigning variables and using them as conditionals and as templates. There is also a pluggable framework for customizing Puppet to interact with new systems of all kinds (such as LVM). Most importantly, Puppet is written around the concept of "modules", which are units of work that are easily shareable between developers and administrators—both inside an organization and across the internet. It is for this reason that Puppet has spawned one of the richest communities of any open source management framework—it allows admins to work together and share knowledge between workplaces, rather than inventing their own deployment tools when they take up residence in a new place. It also allows for concentrating on strategic business projects because the infrastructure automation code is already written.

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