Why Move from Open Source Puppet to Puppet Enterprise? Here are 10 Reasons

Considering moving from Open Source Puppet to Puppet Enterprise? Great! In this article, we'll cover typical use cases for the enterprise version of Puppet, why businesses that moved from Puppet's open source version to Puppet Enterprise made the switch, and how customers drive time to value with Puppet Enterprise faster than Open Source Puppet.

Puppet Enterprise: Way More Than a GUI for Puppet

One of the most common questions we get is: "Is Puppet Enterprise just Open Source Puppet with GUI and support?"

The answer is no.

Puppet Enterprise provides more extensive features and benefits to your team and your company, leading many customers to share they wish they’d moved to Puppet Enterprise sooner.

Puppet Enterprise is built on the same open source code as Open Source Puppet, so it can do all the same agent-based automation, configuration management, and infrastructure as code things the open source version can.

The primary area where Puppet Enterprise stands apart is in the time-saving value and extended use cases we've enabled by engineering a host of features you won't find in Open Source Puppet — features build specifically for enterprise users.

Before we move into the first benefit we’re exploring in this blog, let’s look at why customers move from Open Source Puppet to Puppet Enterprise.

Why Move from Open Source Puppet to Puppet Enterprise?

Customers that choose Puppet Enterprise are growing quickly, need to scale, have outgrown open source capabilities, and are serious about driving automation across their enterprise. They need Puppet to do more for them, with more automation and less work on their part.

Some of the most common reasons customers choose Puppet Enterprise include:

• Time to Value: Enterprises are moving faster than ever and need to be able to immediately experience the benefits Puppet Enterprise delivers.
  • (Read on for 10 specific ways Puppet Enterprise drives faster time to value than Open Source Puppet.)
• Scaling Success: Businesses can’t wait for the manual work required for open source solutions and need to be able to automate scalability.
• Interoperability: With more APIs and third parties needed to support enterprise success, making sure systems and applications work seamlessly is more important than ever.
• Business Continuity: Knowing Puppet Enterprise is backed by professional services and support creates peace of mind for disaster recovery.

“While I believe Open Source Puppet is a fantastic product that already serves the majority of needs,
there are some huge benefits we’ve gained by moving to Puppet Enterprise.”

Lucas Crownover, SysAdmin for Information Services, University of Oregon

Read OU Case Study

10 Ways Puppet Enterprise Uniquely Drives Time to Value

Both Open Source Puppet and Puppet Enterprise give organizations of any size the ability to manage infrastructure securely. But only Puppet Enterprise has key features that are engineered to help organizations maintain more secure, predictable infrastructure at scale with far less effort.

Here are some of the specific ways we've designed Puppet Enterprise to drive faster time to value for customers:

1. Ease of Use: The Puppet Enterprise GUI provides better ways to manage your infrastructure with far more visibility and control, provides a single source of truth, and lets you leverage node groups. You can easily track changes across your infrastructure, create node groups for assigning Puppet code to them, and build a repository of all software installed on your systems.
2. Enhanced Security and Efficiency with RBAC: Puppet Enterprise ships with role-based access control (RBAC), which ensures that members of your team have the Puppet permissions they need to do their jobs — without the risk of making accidental changes to critical infrastructure configurations.
3. Simplified Installation: You can install all Puppet Enterprise infrastructure on a single node to get started. From here, you can scale up to a large or extra-large installation as your infrastructure grows, which lets you plan how you want to grow your Puppet infrastructure.
4. Simplified Upgrades: Get access to the latest Puppet Enterprise features with simplified upgrades. Upgrades are a core aspect of expanding the use cases of Puppet across your organization, helping you get more value from Puppet Enterprise.
5. Quick Automation Scaling with Existing Scripts: With Tasks & Plans, you can leverage content your organization already uses for ad hoc management of your infrastructure. Tasks & Plans allows you to scale automation with your existing scripts by implementing guardrails such as input validation and descriptions.
6. Complex Orchestration: Plans in Puppet Enterprise help you tie together tasks, scripts, commands, and plans (yes, plans in plans!) to create complex workflows with refined access controls.
7. Consistent Infrastructure Management: With the Orchestrator service, you can execute Puppet Enterprise Tasks & Plans whenever you need them, without your team reinventing the wheel each time. Eliminate manual work, reduce human error, and gain consistency and control of the management of your infrastructure from a centralized location.
8. Centralized Multi-OS Patching: Using Puppet Enterprise for automated patch management gives you a single, simplified patching workflow that works across both Windows and Linux operating systems. Managing it all directly from the Puppet Enterprise console eliminates tool sprawl and manual processes, helping you ensure a secure patch management process and continuous compliance.
9. Maintain Healthy Hosts with a Single Interface: You can ensure systems are healthy by using one simplified view and detailed reporting in Puppet Enterprise. Patches and updates can be applied on an ongoing basis with automated workflows that patch, update, and reboot systems on a scheduled basis.
10. Maintain Secure Configurations and Prove Compliance with Less Effort: The Security Compliance Management Console and the integrated CIS-CAT® Pro Assessor, exclusively in Puppet Enterprise, enable you to document continuous compliance efforts with detailed reporting that gives you clear visibility into all systems and changes. By giving your teams system-wide visibility into configuration changes, Puppet Enterprise helps you prove compliance with more frameworks and regulations faster.

All of these enable you to quickly experience time to value when you move to Puppet Enterprise. The automation, standardization, and centralized visibility immediately free your team to focus on the issues that truly move your business forward — giving your enterprise the support and confidence it needs to scale, speed up, and leverage market opportunities.

Case Study: Why Someone Who Loves Open Source Puppet Chose to Move to Puppet Enterprise

Secure-24, a managed hosting provider for critical applications and databases, loved using Open Source Puppet to manage thousands of Linux servers hosting proprietary operation tools. But eventually, their infrastructure grew to large and complex to manage with the basic features and self-guided experience of Open Source Puppet.

Engineering Architect Sean Millichamp said the company switched to Puppet Enterprise "primarily for the stability, testing, and QA" — but they've found huge value in its exclusive features, including GUI, RBAC, compliance reporting, and platform support.

Read Case Study

Take the Next Step toward Better Infrastructure Management with Puppet Enterprise

Think you're ready to learn more about switching to Puppet Enterprise? Request a demo with our team to see how it stacks up to what you're using today, or request pricing to build the perfect Puppet plan to invest in your organization's infrastructure.

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This blog was originally published on September 1, 2021, and has since been updated for relevance and accuracy.