Sun Microsystems uses Puppet to manage over 650 servers across three data centers. Puppet helps ensure consistent configurations, improves efficiency of patching and updating systems, and allows Sun to meet compliance standards. A lead engineer says Puppet saves them time by automating routine tasks and ensuring configurations remain consistent across all servers.

1. puppet
labs Case Study
“Puppet has greatly simplified many
of my standard tasks. Security
patching no longer involves the
headache of running routines to
see which systems were vulnerable
and then implementing batch
jobs to update effected systems.
Now I just run a Puppet profile
Sun Microsystems uses
and it is taken care of.”
- Martin Englund, Lead
Engineer, Sun Microsystems
Puppet to improve efficiency,
accelerate system updates
INduSTRY:
Web Software and ensure consistent
ChAllENGE:
Consistent Configurations configurations across all their
SOluTION:
Puppet
web server architecture
RESulTS: As a premier online brand, Sun Microsystems has strict requirements for high
Manage over 650 Sun servers performance and guaranteed uptime for their top online properties like sun.com, java.
across three U.S. data centers com, mysql.com, openoffice.org and others. Sun needed a system administration tool
while improving system that went beyond internally maintained scripts and batch jobs to ensure that their
consistency and meeting servers were configured consistently and updated in a timely manner.
compliance standards
STARTING ENVIRONMENT KEY OBJECTIVES
• Managed over 650 Sun servers across three U.S. data centers • Uptime & Reliability – Ensure uptime and
in Menlo Park, CA, San Francisco, CA and Las Vegas, NV. reliability of servers supporting the web and database
• Responsible for software and operating system configurations applications for key online properties
on all servers supporting Internet domains including sun. • Compliance – Comply with internal Sun security
com, java.com, mysql.com, openoffice.org and others. requirements including timely distribution of security
• Used internally developed SSH scripts to push changes and patches
packages out to systems. • Configuration Control – Maintain common
• Key challenges included time to deployment of critical system configuration of all servers to ensure a consistent
changes and guaranteed ongoing configuration of Internet environment for the application engineers
resources. • Change Monitoring and Alerts – Identify changes to
servers that would take the system out of compliance
with the standard configuration

2. puppet
labs Case Study
“With Puppet I don’t
have to worry anymore. BENEFITS OBTAINEd
Once I have written • System Consistency – Provided a consistent environment for their application en-
and deployed the gineers. Eliminated worries about inconsistent configuration of key Internet servers.
profiles I can count on • Improved Efficiency – Accelerated identification of vulnerable or out of date sys-
Puppet ensuring timely tems to be prioritized for patching and upgrade. They use Puppet to deploy vulner-
updates and consistent ability mitigations until they can schedule time to patch. Prior to Puppet identifying
configurations across vulnerable systems was a time intensive process.
all my systems. More • Met Compliance Standards – Puppet allowed Sun to meet company and industry
than anything Puppet compliance requirements. Provided alerts for any system that went out of configura-
saves me time that I tion to established security configurations.
simply can’t afford • Increased Visibility – Provided comprehensive information on system hardware,
to lose in supporting type, software and versions. This wasn’t an original objective, but has provided sig-
nificant benefits and replaced their homegrown system for tracking this information.
my data centers.”
- Martin Englund, Lead
Engineer, Sun Microsystems WhY PuPPET?
• Cross Platform Support – Despite their servers almost uniformly running Sun
Solaris, Puppet’s cross platform support for other versions of Unix was important
in their decision to provide a consistent platform for management of even the
occasional non-Solaris system.
• Open Source Solution – Sun is an open source company and this was an
important factor in their choice of Puppet. They had recently had a bad experience
with a commercial software package that was acquired by a larger company where
their investment was lost and they had to start over when the product line was
discontinued.
About Puppet labs • Easier Trouble Shooting – Open source software was easier to trouble shoot
because they had access to the source code. When they experienced a problem it was
Puppet Labs develops and
commercially supports Puppet, the
much easier to track down the source of the problem and solve it.
leading open source platform for • Easy to Deploy and Maintain – Puppet was easy to deploy and support. The
enterprise systems management. scripting language was easy for his team to learn and write routines for system
With millions of nodes under
management and thousands of updates.
users, including Twitter, NYSE,
Zynga, Genentech, Match.com,
eBay, NYU, and Oracle, Puppet
standardizes the way IT staff deploy
and manage infrastructure in the
enterprise and the cloud.
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