If you’ve ever had to set up and maintain a server, the list of tasks can seem endless. You’ve got storage configuration, user account creation, and setup of the packages you need – just for starters. It’s enough of a headache on a single server, but what if you have multiple physical machines or VMs? Then there’s keeping track of updates and changes to your configuration over time.
With Puppet, these processes are automated. Puppet enables you to cut down on repetitive tasks and configure all your servers from one central location, while ensuring everything stays consistent as you reconfigure existing machines and deploy new ones. In other words, Puppet makes the server admin’s life a whole lot easier.
What is Puppet?
Puppet is a configuration management tool that simplifies the creation and maintenance of server configurations. It’s written in Ruby, but has its own declarative language, and can be installed on physical or virtual servers running Linux or Windows operating systems.
Puppet is now part of Perforce Software (acquired in 2022), and the current open-source release line is Puppet 8, with Puppet Enterprise (PE) available in 2025.x long-term support versions.
Puppet is available in two distributions: the open-source core and Puppet Enterprise, which adds role-based access control (RBAC), compliance and reporting dashboards, integration with CI/CD pipelines, and full vendor support.
How Puppet works
Puppet follows a primary server/agent architecture (previously called master/agent).
- The primary server compiles configuration catalogues based on manifests.
- Agents on managed nodes apply these catalogues and report back.
- Facter gathers system facts, Hiera manages external data, and PuppetDB stores reports and inventories.
This model ensures consistent, centralised control across fleets of Linux and Windows machines.
Why use Puppet?
1. Time-saving
Most obviously, Puppet can save time and effort when it comes to configuring, launching and managing servers – especially long-term. By automating everyday processes, server admins can carry them out more quickly and efficiently, freeing up time to focus on more worthy tasks. In terms of usability, Puppet uses modules that provide a simpler interface for some of the trickier elements of configuration, such as PHP.
The Puppet Forge hosts thousands of ready-made modules from the community and vendors, helping teams rapidly adopt best-practice setups for databases, web servers, and security baselines.
2. Reliability
Another major benefit of Puppet is its cross-platform reliability. Configuration files are known as ‘manifests’ and are written in Puppet’s own declarative code (not JSON but the Puppet DSL (.pp files)) – a simple and universal language that can be applied across a wide variety of Windows and Linux operating systems and server setups to always get the same results.
3. Consistency
Puppet also gives you a single, up-to-date and comprehensive source for all your server configurations. For example, you might have a business-critical application that relies on a set of servers with the exact same configuration. With Puppet, it’s a simple case of deploying a single desired configuration across several machines – or changing them all at once.
This leads on to version control. Puppet is ideal for handling the change management process and avoiding what’s known as ‘configuration drift’. Your servers will often change over time, with ad hoc adjustments making it difficult to keep track of a particular machine’s state. In a worst-case scenario, this can result in system failure when a server is no longer configured correctly for the job at hand. A tool like Puppet prevents this by helping you define the exact configuration of all your servers at any time.
4. Safety and stability
Another reason to use Puppet is disaster recovery. Let’s say a hard disk dies on a critical server. Puppet maintains all your existing configurations, so the process of rebuilding a server is greatly simplified and much faster. Puppet restores the configuration, not the actual data – you’ll always need a separate backup solution for files and databases.
Real-world use cases
Puppet remains a practical tool for organisations that manage anything from a handful of servers to thousands spread across hybrid environments. Beyond saving time, its real value is in enforcing consistency and reducing risk in day-to-day operations.
1. Hybrid infrastructure management
One of the strongest areas where Puppet shines is hybrid infrastructure management. Many companies now run a mix of on-premises servers, cloud VMs, and container hosts. Puppet lets you apply the same baseline policies across all of them, whether that’s setting file permissions on Linux, ensuring Windows services are patched, or rolling out updates to web server packages. This consistency helps avoid the drift that so often appears when teams manually patch different environments.
2. Compliance automation
Another use case is compliance automation. In regulated sectors like finance or healthcare, proving that every machine follows the same configuration standard is a legal requirement. Puppet Enterprise integrates reporting and access controls, so administrators can show auditors exactly when and how configurations were applied. These same features also make it easier to prepare for regular security scans.
3. Drift detection
Puppet is also relied on for drift detection and remediation. Over time, ad hoc fixes creep into production servers: someone changes a port, disables a service, or tweaks a setting “just this once.” Puppet continuously checks actual state against the declared desired state and corrects it automatically. That way, teams don’t need to manually hunt for inconsistencies after the fact.
4. Disaster recovery
When it comes to resilience, Puppet simplifies disaster recovery baselines. If a server or VM fails, rebuilding can be as straightforward as spinning up a new instance and letting Puppet apply the same manifest. While data still needs to come from backups, knowing that the system will boot into a known configuration reduces downtime and removes guesswork.
5. CI/CD pipeline integration
Finally, Puppet integrates smoothly with modern CI/CD pipelines. By storing manifests in version control, teams can treat infrastructure changes just like application code. This practice – often called infrastructure as code – makes it easier to review, test, and roll back changes. It also creates a shared language between developers and operations teams, improving coordination across the deployment cycle.
In short, Puppet’s use cases go beyond installation and setup:
- Maintaining consistent baselines across mixed Windows and Linux fleets.
- Enforcing compliance standards and generating audit-ready reports.
- Detecting and correcting configuration drift automatically.
- Speeding up disaster recovery by rebuilding servers to a known state.
- Integrating infrastructure management into CI/CD workflows.
Versions and support
- Current open source: Puppet 8 (released 2023, actively maintained).
- Current enterprise: Puppet Enterprise 2025.x with long-term support.
- Since 2025, downloading Puppet’s open-source binaries works a little differently. You now need to access them from a private repository and agree to a licence before use. The code is still open source, but this extra step helps ensure you’re getting a secure, trusted build straight from the vendor.
If you’ve been inspired to play around with Puppet, you’ll find the ideal server solution with Fasthosts. Whether on our powerful Dedicated Servers or our highly scalable VPS, we ensure your online projects have all the resources they need to grow, develop and thrive, with UK data centres and 24/7 UK support.
