Configuration Management Automation
Super-Visions assists your company in implementation and deployment projects, Best Practices advice and guidance on implementing DevOps techniques and processes, Public and Private trainings on Configuration Management and its Automation.
Configuration Management Automation is key to provide you with full "IT Peace of Mind":
- Automatically track changes and their impact: planned or unplanned
- Eliminate human error through "smart" automation
Super-Visions uses Puppet Labs & iTop:
iTop includes a complete CMDB that allows IT operators to describe all items they have under their control. It provides a logical model of the IT infrastructure by identifying, controlling, maintaining and verifying the version of all existing Configuration Items (CIs).
Relationships between CIs are also documented in iTop CMDB, thus IT engineers can easily analyse dependencies within the infrastructure and impact due to outages.
Puppet is IT automation software that helps system administrators manage infrastructure throughout its lifecycle, from provisioning and configuration to patch management and compliance. Using Puppet, you can easily automate repetitive tasks, quickly deploy critical applications, and proactively manage change, scaling from 10s of servers to 1000s, on-premise or in the cloud.
Puppet & iTop are available as both open source and commercial software. You can see the differences for Puppet here and decide which is right for your organization.
How Puppet Works
Puppet uses a declarative, model-based approach to IT automation.
- Define the desired state of the infrastructure’s configuration using Puppet’s declarative configuration language.
- Simulate configuration changes before enforcing them.
- Enforce the deployed desired state automatically, correcting any configuration drift.
- Report on the differences between actual and desired states and any changes made enforcing the desired state.
Define Reusable Configuration Modules
To define your infrastructure’s desired state, you can select from over 300 pre-built, freely downloadable configuration modules in the Puppet Forge, Puppet Labs’ online marketplace. Alternatively, if you have special requirements you can build a custom module using Puppet’s configuration language. Once defined, you can reuse these configurations across physical, virtual, and cloud environments as well as across operating systems. Moreover, you can combine configuration modules to create complete application configuration stacks that share common configurations.
Enforce Desired State
After you deploy your configuration modules, the Puppet Agent on each node communicates regularly with the Puppet Master server to automatically enforce the desired states of the nodes.
- The Puppet Agent on the node sends Facts, or data about its state, to the Puppet Master server.
- Using the Facts, the Puppet Master server compiles a Catalog, or detailed data about how the node should be configured, and sends this back to the Puppet Agent.
- After making any changes to return to the desired state (or, in “no-op mode,” simply simulating these changes), the Puppet Agent sends a complete Report back to the Puppet Master.
- The Reports are fully accessible via open APIs for integration with other IT systems.
