Build on Open Source Puppet with Puppet Enterprise (PE). Part 2 of 3

This is the second of three blog posts about taking your organization to the next level of automation by building from open source Puppet to Puppet Enterprise.

In the previous blog post, we briefly discussed some of the reasons that differentiate Puppet Enterprise from Open Source Puppet. Here are some more reasons growing companies move to Puppet Enterprise from open source.

Faster Enterprise grade support

Open Source Puppet has limited support, which is mostly community driven, but PE offers:

• Puppet experts available 24/7 to help you deliver business value faster than with Open Source Puppet.
• Access to a private support portal with options for email and phone support as well as up to date documentation to help you troubleshoot and resolve issues independently if desired.
• An account manager to help you find what you need and guide you in the right direction and quickly solve your problems.
• Immediate access to all product updates and training material.
• Prioritization of bug reports or feature requests.

Self Service options for all teams

Open Source Puppet does not provide self-service options whereas PE:

• Provides features that allow different teams to manage their automation and infrastructure without the need to manage the tooling.
• With these self service features and workspaces, other teams can own the authoring, validation, and delivery of the automation content for their service without blocking or being blocked by others.
• This approach clearly separates the tooling and the infrastructure, and different teams that maintain them.

Real time reports and visibility

There’s limited visibility and reporting with Open Source Puppet, whereas, Puppet Enterprise includes:

• A web portal were you can see graphical reports, and visualize the state of your infrastructure. With this tool you can collaborate and response to changes faster.
• Real time visibility of changes to your infrastructure, and the effects they have on your resources.
• The ability to create reports for your executives and auditors and ensure you infrastructure is operating in compliance.
• Features available for different environments enabling you to first tests in a safe environment before pushing changes to production.

Role based access for distributed teams

• Your organisation is growing but Open Source Puppet is designed for individuals and small, local teams, and does not provide role based access. On the other hand Puppet Enterprise:
• Provides RBAC access for your teams. This means you can safely grant partial access to your teams depending on their responsibility without worrying about potential impact on security.
• Allows safe delegation of role-based access across teams with audit trails and the capability to quickly orchestrate change across tens of thousands of machines
• Is built for distributed teams. It provides a standardized way to automate delivery and operation of your software.

Scalable full-lifecycle automation for all infrastructure

Open Source Puppet does not enable full-lifecycle infrastructure automation. You need Puppet Enterprise as it enables:

• A consistent approach to automation across your entire infrastructure and workflows.
• Management from the initial provisioning of the machines, to system configuration, and application deployment.
• Automation and management of your entire application stack, core infrastructure, middleware and application deployment.
• Full control and visibility from a single Enterprise level solution.

Check out the final post on this topic…HERE

In the next blog post, we provide guidance about the right time to move to PE and how to get there.