Puppet

Puppet is one of the long standing tools in the full-fledged configuration management space. It’s an open source tool, but given how long it’s been around, it has been well vetted and deployed in some of the biggest and most demanding environments. Puppet is based on Ruby, but uses a customized Domain Scripting Language (DSL) closer to JSON for working within it. It runs as a master-client setup and uses a model-driven approach. The Puppet code design works as a list of dependencies, which can make things easier or more confusing, depending on your setup.

When to use it: Puppet is a good choice if stability and maturity are key factors for you. It’s good for large enterprises with a heterogeneous environment and range of skills on the DevOps team.

Price: Puppet comes in a free open source version or a paid commercial enterprise version that runs $120 per node per year, with volume discounts.

Pros:

• Well-established support community through Puppet Labs.
• It has the most mature interface and runs on nearly every OS.
• Simple installation and initial setup.
• Most complete Web UI in this space.
• Strong reporting capabilities.

Cons:

• For more advanced tasks, you will need to use the CLI, which is Ruby-based (meaning you’ll have to understand Ruby).
• Support for pure-Ruby versions (rather than those using Puppet’s customized DSL) is being scaled back.
• Because of the DSL and a design that does not focus on simplicity, the Puppet code base can grow large, unwieldy, and hard to pick up for new people in your organization at higher scale.
• Model-driven approach means less control compared to code-driven approaches.

Quick Start Video of Puppet