Puppet (software)

Puppet Inc.

Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Software
Founded	2005 (2005)
Founder	Luke Kanies
Headquarters	Portland, Oregon , United States
Key people	Yvonne Wassenaar (CEO)
Products	Puppet, Puppet Enterprise, Puppet Pipelines, Puppet Discovery
Owner	Perforce Software

Puppet is a software configuration management solution designed to oversee the entire lifecycle of IT infrastructure. Created by Puppet Inc., it follows an open-core business approach, providing a free software edition initially distributed under the GPL v2 license until version 2.7.0, after which it adopted the Apache License. Its commercial variant, Puppet Enterprise, is licensed under proprietary terms.

The platform is compatible with various Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, Solaris, BSD, macOS, AIX, and HP-UX, as well as Microsoft Windows, broadening its applicability and market penetration worldwide. The primary codebase is developed in Ruby; essential modules like Facter are implemented in C++, while components such as Puppet Server and Puppet DB utilize Clojure.

Based in the United States, Puppet Inc. operates under the umbrella of Perforce Software following its acquisition. Perforce itself is owned by private equity investors, highlighting targeted growth and investment within the infrastructure automation sector. This structure strengthens Puppet’s position in delivering scalable configuration management solutions tailored for diverse enterprise settings.

Design

Puppet employs a proprietary declarative language to specify system configurations and follows a model-driven approach that minimizes the need for advanced programming skills. It supports declarative configuration management across both Unix-like platforms and Microsoft Windows.

Architecture

The system functions on a client-server architecture: the client component, known as an agent, interacts with the server component referred to as the master. For straightforward deployments, Puppet can be executed independently via command line without server dependency.

The Puppet Server runs on one or multiple servers, while Puppet Agents are deployed on the managed hosts. Agents obtain configuration data from the server, enforce those configurations locally, and then report their status back to the server.

Example of Puppet resource syntax:

<syntaxhighlight lang="puppet"> type { 'title':

 attribute => value

} </syntaxhighlight>

Sample declaration defining a Unix user:

<syntaxhighlight lang="puppet"> user { 'harry':

 ensure => present,
 uid    => '1000',
 shell  => '/bin/bash',
 home   => '/home/harry'

} </syntaxhighlight>

Company

Puppet Inc. functions as a subsidiary within Perforce, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, USA. Established in 2005 by entrepreneur Luke Kanies, Puppet has developed under leadership including CEO Yvonne Wassenaar, who took over in January 2019 after previous executive roles at Airware, New Relic, and VMware.

In February 2011, Puppet introduced its inaugural commercial offering, Puppet Enterprise, which enhanced the open-source platform with enterprise-grade capabilities. The company broadened its portfolio by acquiring Distelli, an infrastructure automation firm, in September 2017. Distelli’s continuous integration and delivery products were rebranded as Puppet Pipelines for Applications and Containers upon their release in October 2017.

Product innovation continued with the launch of Puppet Discovery in May 2018 to improve hybrid network resource management. Financially, Puppet secured $42 million in funding during June 2018—raising total capital to $150 million—in a round led by Cisco alongside investors Kleiner Perkins, True Ventures, EDBI, and VMware.

Key alliances include collaborations with VMware, Amazon Web Services, Cisco, OpenStack, Microsoft Azure, Eucalyptus, and Zenoss—strengthening Puppet’s influence within infrastructure automation markets.

Following Perforce’s acquisition of Puppet in April 2022, a strategic workforce reduction of approximately 15% occurred at Puppet’s Portland office as part of post-acquisition restructuring efforts.

See also

• Comparison of open-source configuration management tools
• CFEngine