Book review: Puppet 8 for DevOps engineers

Book review: Puppet 8 for DevOps engineers At times, our clients inquire about recommended books on Puppet that are both recent and informative. Unfortunately, we were unable to provide any suggestions for some time. However, with the release of David’s new Puppet book “Puppet 8 for DevOps Engineers”, we are now able to recommend it with confidence to those seeking to enhance their Puppet skills and streamline their automation processes.

Scope of the book

Previously, most literature on Puppet focused on the Puppet language, which was extremely helpful at the time. However, Puppet has since evolved to encompass much more. In addition to the language itself, one must also understand hiera data lookups, module creation and publication, and proper code structuring to ensure maintainability. Release management is also a crucial aspect of Puppet use today. David’s book covers all of these topics in depth and with great clarity.

Shared Insights

David and we have both been working in the Puppet domain for a while. It’s great to see that we share David’s view on how Puppet users are evolving:

Puppet has come a long way since its inception.

Puppet has come a long way since its inception. It started off as a tool that relied heavily on developers to figure out how best to use it to solve problems. Today, it has evolved into a tool that offers standardized patterns and solutions that users can easily adopt for their automation and deployment needs. This shift has allowed users to focus on finding solutions rather than worrying about the underlying technology.

What we liked

We are highly regarded in the Puppet community for our Oracle Puppet modules. We appreciated that David used an example featuring Oracle in his explanation of roles and profiles.

Roles versus profiles versus modules

What can be confusing, at this point, is that you can end up with an Oracle Role, an Oracle profile, and an Oracle module. So, while the Oracle module configures and installs Oracle with various parameters available to it to customize the installation, the Oracle profile is about how your organization uses this module and what other modules it might add to this technology stack. You might specify that you always use Oracle with a cluster service and, therefore, your Oracle profile contains both an Oracle module and a cluster module. Alternatively, it might pass parameters to the Oracle module within your profile, which set default kernel settings for your organization’s configuration.

Summary

If you are looking to learn or improve your skills in using Puppet for automation and configuration management, then “Puppet 8 for DevOps Engineers” by David Sandilands is the perfect book for you. This book provides a comprehensive guide to Puppet 8, including the Puppet language, Hiera data lookups, versioning strategies, and best practices.

What sets this book apart is the broad spectrum of subjects that David explains. The book is well-organized, with each chapter building upon the previous one, and includes hands-on exercises to reinforce learning. Overall, “Puppet 8 for DevOps Engineers” is a must-read for anyone looking to master Puppet and take their automation skills to the next level. Although beginners at the start might be overwhelmed by the scope of the book, it is suitable for both beginners and experienced Puppet users, and its practical approach makes it an invaluable resource for anyone working in DevOps.

If even after reading this book (or before) you think you need assistance with your Puppet setup, we are here to assist you. We have been assisting customers getting the most out of their Puppet setup for years. Don’t hesitate to contact us at info@enterprisemodules.com or by phone: +31 (0)653 847 326 for some consultancy.

About us

Enterprise Modules is the leading developer of enterprise-ready Puppet modules for Oracle databases, Oracle WebLogic, and IBM MQ or DB2 software. Our Puppet modules help sysadmins and DBAs automate the installation, configuration, and management of their databases and application server systems. These modules allow them to make managed, consistent, repeatable, and fast changes to their infrastructure and automatically enforce consistency.

For more information, please visit our website: www.enterprisemodules.com or contact us at info@enterprisemodules.com.