Announcing Puppet Enterprise 2016.2 + New Modules & Integrations

[Michael Olson]

Hi everyone - Today, we announced the latest in Puppet Enterprise 2016.2 (available beginning later this month), a new set of Puppet modules and integrations, and more from Project Blueshift. These updates continue to make it easier to manage today’s technology while evolving your modern cloud and container practices, in a standard way.

Check out What’s New in Puppet Enterprise 2016.2

• New change success reporting - The Puppet Enterprise 2016.2 release provides a new level of granularity to show which changes that ran with a cached catalog were successful, which failed, and which failed but were able to revert to the last known, good state. This means that you can get a clearer sense of how failures affect the environments you are managing.
  
• Classify nodes in Puppet Enterprise web UI based on structured and trusted facts - Without granular access to metadata about infrastructure, it can be challenging to classify and manage servers efficiently and make rapid changes. The Puppet Enterprise node classifier web UI now consumes richer metadata about infrastructure so nodes can be segmented with more granularity to drive change more quickly, efficiently and with greater consistency.
  

You can register for our upcoming webinar to learn more about what's new: http://info.puppet.com/2150-Whats-New-in-PE-2016.1-Register.html

A Common Language and Data Center Standard

We've also added to the broad range of technology you can manage with Puppet through new integrations and modules for:

• IBM z Systems and LinuxONE - In partnership with IBM, we'll have a new agent to manage Linux VMs on IBM z Systems and LinuxONE.
  
• WebSphere - We help simplify the management of WebSphere with a new module that provides a repeatable and consistent process for deploying WebSphere, including deployment managers, application servers, and IBM HTTP Servers (IHS) for WebSphere Application Server.
  
• Cisco - With the latest release of the Puppet Supported Cisco module, we’ve added support for the 5k, 6k, and 7k line of Cisco Nexus switches, in addition to existing support for the 3k and 9k series of switches.

New Ways of Using Docker and Puppet

In April, we launched Project Blueshift, our dedicated way of engaging with leading-edge technologies and their communities. So far, we’ve focused on providing modules, examples and guidance to help you deliver and operate modern software like CoreOS, Docker (Compose, Swarm, Network, UCP), Kubernetes, Mesos and Mesosphere, and more. Today, we’re adding a new set of Docker images for running Puppet in Docker, released to Docker Hub.

A set of Docker images for Puppet Server, PuppetDB and Puppet agent are now available on Docker Hub. Now, Puppet itself can be deployed and run within Docker, making it more portable and easier to maintain, test and scale. In addition to the images on the Docker Hub, we’ve created examples and guidance to help shed light on ways to use Docker with Puppet.

You can read all about what’s new and find links to learn more via our blog: https://puppet.com/blog/use-puppet-in-docker-manage-ibm-websphere-z-systems-with-puppet-enterprise

Thanks,

Michael

-- 

Michael Olson | Senior Product Marketing Manager

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[Brian Fekete]

Whats the difference between the old module and the new one? I see nothing different except that you changed the module name. 

Old one: https://forge.puppet.com/joshbeard/websphere

New one: https://forge.puppet.com/puppetlabs/websphere_application_server

Also the IBM installation manager which is a prerequisite to Websphere is broken because Puppet removed the ps fact it relied on. 

[Bryan Jen]

Hi Brian,

The new websphere_application_server module builds upon the great start provided by Josh Beard and adds some important bug fixes and polish to the defines, types, and providers while maintaining feature parity with the old module. This is an introductory release in the puppetlabs namespace on the Forge that provides a foundation for us to iterate and build towards an eventual supported module.

The ibm_installation_manager issue you pointed out was fixed in a recent refactor I believe. The ibm_pkg provider no longer requires the 'ps' fact. The PR for this can be found here: https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppetlabs-ibm_installation_manager/pull/11/files#diff-da882ddff62c30975d57d19358066749L104. With much gratitude to Corey Osman (@logicminds) for the contribution. This fix has since been released to the Forge(https://forge.puppet.com/puppetlabs/ibm_installation_manager) and is in version 0.2.0 and newer.

Thanks,

Bryan Jen

[Brian Fekete]

Hey Bryan,

Thanks for your response! I'm excited to see the changes to the module since it's one of the most important modules I use. Is there a ballpark estimate date for when the changes are going to be pushed? 

Awesome! I tested it out on a 2016 PE server earlier last week and saw it was failing. I see that you've made changes recently and plan on checking out the module again.

Thanks,

Brian Fekete 

[Bryan Jen]

You're very welcome Brian!

I plan on publishing an update to the ibm_installation_manager module in the next few days to address an idempotency issue. As for the websphere module, we are hoping to receive some valuable feedback on the 0.2.0 release we just published to the Forge(https://forge.puppet.com/puppetlabs/websphere_application_server). Please feel free to contact me with any feedback!

-Bryan 

[Murugan N]

Hi,

I am doing POC of 2016.2 , I have installed and configured 2016.2 master and agent. I am testing hiera configured values during the test escape sequence value is not working

Example  test.yaml 

usa::development::dat::mcp::admin:               'MPC/USA/MPC/PROD/admin\ \(local\ account\)''

The same configuration is working in puppet 3.1. kindly let me know how to fix this issue for detecting escape sequence / space on 2016.2.

Regards,

Murugan