Citrix Systems used Puppet Labs consulting services to help them accelerate benefits from using Puppet for large-scale configuration management and eliminate configuration drift across their infrastructure of thousands of systems. Puppet Labs helped Citrix plan and implement their Puppet strategy, including coding architecture and creating modules. As a result, Citrix was able to consistently manage configurations, reduce errors, improve security and efficiency, and deliver higher quality services faster.

1. puppet
labs Case Study
“Puppet Labs consulting and
services dramatically accelerated
the benefits we received from
Puppet. The Puppet Labs staff
was skilled enough to make
categorical changes in the way the
used and benefited from Puppet.
They helped plan and implement
their strategy including coding
architecture and creating modules.”
CITRIX USES PUPPET LABS
- Joe Allen, Web Matrix CONSULTING TO ACCELERATE
Manager at Citrix Online
LARGE SCALE CONFIGURATION
INDUSTRY: MANAGEMENT AND ELIMINATE
CONFIGURATION DRIFT
Web Software
ChALLENGE:
Eliminate Configuration Drift
Citrix Systems is a leading enterprise software company that offers end-to-end
SOLUTION: virtualization, networking, and SaaS solutions on-demand to users in any location
Puppet Core &
on any device. Running an IT infrastructure that’s constantly under migration and
Professional Services
containing various systems (integration, QA, staging, live and reporting) that are
RESULTS: always at different stages of development, Citrix required a solution that could provide
Consistently manage fine-grained control over system configurations, ensure each machine was properly
thousands of systems with configured, and accurately track and report the status of each system at any time.
unique configurations
STARTING ENVIRONMENT KEY OBJECTIVES
• Fast-moving IT infrastructure consisted of several thousand ma- • Configuration Management - Enhance the
chines that produced and packaged Citrix’s software solutions, all of management of thousands of machines at
which are RPM based. A high change-rate environment included up different levels of configuration. For example,
to nine weekly deployments for Citrix products. for hundreds of different time servers, it was
• Oracle environment included all the systems required to support essential that all the servers were configured the
a software and service company, including mail, DNS, and other same way.
infrastructure. • Uniformity & Scalability - Ensure the
• Without accurate accounting to ensure the entire fleet of up to 25 right packages were properly installed and
different profiles for different machine types were configured prop- maintained on a large number of unique
erly, Citrix required a solution that could handle significant configu- systems. With Puppet, only one system had
ration management changes and address configuration drift issues. to be maintained for both installation and
maintenance.
• After looking at several commercial and non-commercial products,
Citrix chose Puppet because it was a good match for their skill sets, • Accelerated Value from Puppet – They wanted
could integrate with a lot of different products, and had a very fine- to move as quickly as possible to address their
grained control over what they needed to do. Puppets’ recipes and configuration management needs and this was a
class structure also provided a good administrative and organizational key objective in choosing to work with Puppet
structure that Citrix felt was the right approach. Labs consulting.

2. puppet
labs Case Study
“Puppet has been a success
on so many levels for BENEFITS OBTAINED
us, from configuration • Operational Efficiency – Puppet has helped Citrix reduce the time it takes to
enforcement to using it make daily changes and ensure the configuration is consistent and correct on each
for mass change. Because machine. As a result, the customer has increased their overall operational efficiency
we deliver a service to and ROI.
internal customers, the • Lower Error Rates & Higher Quality – Puppet’s highly reliable systems ensure all
biggest surprise is how configuration changes are done correctly, thereby reducing Citrix’s error rates and
much Puppet has helped increasing the overall quality of their IT infrastructure.
them, rather than just our • Enhanced Security – Puppet has improved the overall security of the customer’s IT
own internal group. By infrastructure. For example, rather than having an administrator put a security file
on each machine manually, they put it in a Puppet recipe that provisions the file to
improving the efficiency the entire fleet of systems, automating the process to ensure consistency.
of our IT infrastructure,
• Better Customer Service – Instead of having to manually reconfigure a large
Puppet allows us to number of Citrix’s machines, Puppet enforces mass change to an entire fleet to
deliver our service faster, provide better service to its internal customers.
and with higher quality.” • Accelerated Puppet Benefits – Puppet Labs support and consulting dramatically
- Joe Allen, Web Matrix accelerated their implementation and enhanced the way they used Puppet to
Manager at Citrix Online address their challenges.
WhY PUPPET?
According to Joe Allen, “Puppet’s unique approach to configuration management
automation provided Citrix with a way to achieve previously unachievable levels of
consistency, predictability, and scalability. Puppet’s passionate open source commu-
nity ensures rapid innovation and testing, and Puppet has been reliably deployed in
About Puppet Labs 100’s of large scale environments, making it the obvious choice.”
Puppet Labs, is the provider of • Consistency – Configuration drift in such a large environment created
Puppet, an open source platform inconsistencies and higher mean time to repair rates. By using Puppet, Citrix is
that automates configuration able to achieve greater peace of mind by ensuring that their systems are in a known
management and provisioning.
good state.
With more than 100 customers
and thousands of users including • Predictability – Having all of their systems in a consistent state enhances Citrix’s
Digg, Genentech, Match.com, ability to reliably roll out new services to meet business demand.
NYU, Oracle and Sun, Shopzilla,
Stanford University, SugarCRM and • Enhanced Visibility & Reporting – Puppet provides granular visibility into the
Twitter, Puppet takes the pain out configuration of each machine. Enhanced reporting on the status of each system
of manually configuring servers by enables the IT staff to determine if changes have been successfully deployed to all
providing systems administrators
with a simplified, reusable platform. target machines, and helps them identify anomalies before they cause instability.
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