Markus Spanner-Denzer
After studying physics, I worked some years at the theoretical physics department of a university writing computer simulations. Spending more and more time operating the departments' computers instead of working on my science projects, I decided to work full-time in IT at some point. So, about 8 years ago, and joined noris network AG, a German IT service provider offering a wide range of services based on their own high security data centers.
As a Senior IT Systems Engineer Linux, I work on individual solutions for our customers, with strong focus on automation, configuration management and security.
Sessions
At noris network, a German IT service provider, we have a long history of using OpenSource Puppet (or now OpenVox) for configuration management of Linux servers which we operate for our customers. From time to time, we set up dedicated Puppet setups for individual customers with special security requirements. While these customers usually have a mix of Linux and Windows servers, we initially used Puppet only on the Linux servers and managed Windows servers in different ways. About 4 years ago, we started to use Puppet on Windows servers as well. Our goal was to harmonize configuration and operating processes of both operating systems.
This talk is about our experiences with puppet in a mixed Linux/Windows environment, both from the technical and the organizational perspective.
The technical part include e.g. the structure of git repos, our hiera data tree, and module selection. The organizational aspect is the cooperation of Linux engineers with a deep puppet knowledge and Windows engineers new to puppet.
What works well for us? What did not?