Today Puppet Labs announced version 2.5 of the configuration automation suite Puppet Enterprise. The new version adds support for Windows, integration with the Puppet Forge Marketplace and more insights into infrastructural changes. Windows support was added to the open source version of Puppet with version 2.7.6.

“Puppet for Windows is one of the top search queries for our site,” Puppet Labs CEO Luke Kanies told me. However, Puppet Labs isn’t yet building integrations with Microsoft Operations Manager or other Windows management tools. “We’re not sure who is going to use it yet,” Kanies said. “We know that Linux/Unix admins will use it for heterogenous environments, but we don’t know if it’s going to be used in pure Windows environments.”

Also, the Puppet Data Library, which can provide information into changes made to infrastructure and be used for change management, reporting, compliance audits and monitoring. Monitoring and management tools like Boundary and Nodeable can already leverage this data.

Puppet Forge already provides access to over 300 ready-made Puppet modules. Now these will be available from directly within the Puppet Enterprise interface.

Although the data library may be the most significant addition for Puppet Labs’ long term strategy, the support for Windows is an important short term move as Puppet Labs competes with its rival Opscode. Opscode is the company behind the open source configuration automation tool Chef, which added Windows support last year. Earlier this week Opscode announced that it closed an additional $19.5 million round of funding, so this announcement from Puppet Labs is well timed.

Earlier this month I looked at some metrics to see how the competition between Puppet and Chef is playing out. Puppet, which was first released in tk, continues to hold a lead over Chef, first released in tk, based on mailing list subscribers and IRC participants. These metrics may not reflect enterprise adoption, however. Puppet still leads Chef in terms of Dice.com job listings, which may be a more adequate reflection of enterprise interest, but it doesn’t have nearly so strong a lead there.