While corporate needs have driven a great deal of cloud development over the past decade or so, the effects are trickling down to the consumer level with each passing day. Mobile apps, social networks, multiplayer games and on-demand content are just a few of the indicators of the type of power needed from the cloud these days.

Take Zynga, for instance. The massive game network has seen an incredible amount of growth in the past two years alone, with a heavy presence on Facebook, and rapid expansion into the mobile realm. We don’t often think about the backbone required for this kind of scalability, but Puppet Labs, an infrastructure provider behind Zynga, is kind enough to remind us.

Puppet Labs released data from its Zynga case study this morning, noting some of the challenges and opportunities behind helping a game platform of this size meet the demands of millions of players. Puppet Labs provides enterprise support and training, dealing specifically with the large scale infrastructure that Zynga has become.

Responsible for the infrastructure of all Zynga’s gaming studios and properties (FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker, and FrontierVille), supporting, maintaining, deploying and configuring servers to match the growth demands Zynga puts forth. This aready includes tens of thousands of servers, spanning the public and private cloud sectors.

One thing Zynga discovered early on was that manual processing behind server management was an impossibility for scaling up, and promptly switched to more automated services with Puppet Labs. This is a predicament many companies face, as their server needs become compounded as datacenters become more involved and necessary for future growth.

Beyond scalability, some of the key things Puppet Labs looked at for Zynga included a portable infrastructure, flexibility in regards to their diversity amongst gaming properties, and infrastructure insight. This allows Zynga to take assessment of each machine, with an interface that’s easy for data breakdown.

What Puppet Labs was able to accomplish was speedier deployment, speed of recovery, more consistency around servers, and improved collaboration for Zynga’s management team. It’s a pretty big feather in Puppet Labs’ hat, coming off the recent acquisition of the Marionette Collective, expanding its services and capabilities.