Support for Docker containers is among a host of enhancements Puppet Labs Inc. made at its PuppetConf user conference this week.

The maker of IT automation software for use in DevOps environments also enhanced its core enterprise product with support for the Jenkins automation server, new reporting capabilities and orchestration features that enable teams to segment their infrastructure and set up phased deployments for faster production. Puppet also announced a VMware Inc. vRealize Automation plugin for Puppet Enterprise that enables self service provisioning of compliant infrastructure across on premises and multi-cloud environments.

Puppet Docker Image Build is said to automate the process of building containers and moving them into production environments. Containers have grown increasingly popular with developers because of the ease with which they can be deployed and moved between development, test and production environments, both on-premises and in the cloud.

The new capabilities add to existing Puppet functionality for installing and managing container infrastructure. Customers can use Image Build to create standard, consistent ways to install Docker operating environments as well as build and deploy containers.

“Our customers typically have teams managing broad infrastructure. Trying to keep track of what they have embedded in a bunch of Docker files hits the wall pretty quickly,” said Tim Zonca, Puppet’s vice president of product marketing. “We have standardized a way to code, share and move code through your pipeline.”

Emerging technology support

The new container support is part of Project Blueshift, a Puppet Labs initiative aimed at helping organizations speed adoption of emerging technologies. In line with that strategy, Puppet has recently introduced automated installation and management of open source tools like Consul, CoreOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos, Mesosphere and others.

The enhanced Docker support takes that campaign up the stack a notch, introducing templates and a code repository along with a domain-specific language to support configuration reuse, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. Zonca said there are thousands of free downloadable modules on the Puppet website covering different deployment scenarios.

“You can now do all the things developers have done with agile development and Scrum, with along with peer review and continuous delivery,” he said.

Puppet Enterprise 2016.4 also advances the company’s campaign to build what it calls “situational awareness” into the its tools. The idea is to give developers context for making changes that includes awareness of the state of infrastructure and the origins and impact of changes.

The new release addresses this need by providing deeper visibility into the cause of changes across an organization’s infrastructure with reporting that distinguishes between intentional changes and corrective or unexpected changes (see image above). Developers can now know exactly when unexpected changes occur so they can troubleshoot faster, reduce recovery time and alert security teams, if needed. Development managers can know if changes occurring across infrastructure are the result of drift from a desired state, which would indicate lapses in process.

Customers can now query their Puppet configuration database with a greater degree of precision, Zonca said. “Puppet knows a tremendous amount of stuff about your infrastructure, your inventory and what’s running, so we’ve made that accessible to query, such as showing all the instances of OpenSSL that match a version with a particular vulnerability,” he said.

Integration with Jenkins enables Puppet Enterprise and Jenkins users to combine the continuous delivery and automation features of both platforms to build continuous delivery pipelines. Previously, that process was manual, but “now you can define your entire pipeline and, based on the code, define jobs in Puppet,” Zonca said.

All enhancements are included in subscriptions for existing customers.

Image courtesy Puppet Labs