Puppet, the standard for automating the delivery and operation of the software that powers everything around us, today announced the latest in Puppet Enterprise 2016.2 and Project Blueshift, along with a new set of Puppet modules. With this latest release, Puppet builds on the industry's most comprehensive support for data center automation so businesses can make current investments more efficient and take advantage of new investments efficiently and securely.

"Project Blueshift is focused on ensuring that organizations can rely on Puppet as a bridge between today's reality and tomorrow's," said Deepak Giridharagopal, CTO and chief architect of Puppet. "So, whether teams are delivering applications running across containers in AWS, or updating middleware on the mainframe, they can provide and operate it in a standard way, with one common language. With Puppet, organizations can more easily adopt new technologies and deliver software faster, even in brownfield environments."

Project Blueshift
Puppet recently announced Project Blueshift to give organizations the tools needed to manage next generation infrastructure, simply and reliably. Through Project Blueshift, Puppet has focused on providing modules, examples, and guidance to help customers deliver and operate modern software like CoreOS, Docker (Compose, Swarm, Network, UCP), Kubernetes, Mesos, and more. Today it is announcing the next set of innovation associated with Blueshift -- a new set of Docker images for running Puppet software 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 on top of Docker, making it more portable and easier to maintain, test, and scale. In addition to the images on the Docker Hub, Puppet is providing examples and documentation to help people adopt this technology and use it to advance their practices.

The Datacenter Standard
In this release Puppet adds to the broad range of technology you can manage with Puppet through new integrations and modules for:

• IBM z Systems and LinuxONE - Many of the largest enterprise companies in the world run their business-critical applications on IBM z Systems and LinuxONE. These organizations are looking to adopt cloud management best practices while ensuring their systems meet security and compliance policies. In collaboration with IBM, Puppet is introducing a new agent to manage Linux VMs on IBM z Systems and LinuxONE. This gives joint customers a common language to manage their platforms and applications, whether they're running on x86 servers or scale up systems such as z Systems or LinuxONE. Additionally, it provides built-in intelligence for orchestrating changes across distributed applications. A fully supported agent with packages for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and 12 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 will be available later this summer. For more details see our IBM Solutions page.  
• IBM WebSphere® - Puppet helps to simplify the management of IBM WebSphere with a new module that provides a repeatable and consistent process for deploying IBM WebSphere instances including deployment managers, application servers, and IBM HTTP Servers (IHS) for IBM WebSphere Application Server traditional. The IBM WebSphere module is now available with full support expected by the end of the year.
• 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. By extending Puppet to networking, IT teams can realize the benefits of DevOps practices, including automating time-consuming and error-prone manual processes, tighter collaboration across teams, and faster deployment times.
  

"Businesses must develop and deploy new applications faster than ever to keep up with new customer demands and stay ahead of competitors," said Mike Dessens, vice president of offering management for IBM z Systems and LinuxONE. "Puppet Enterprise for IBM z Systems and LinuxONE can help simplify IT management and speed application deployment for systems administrators across their hybrid cloud environments, so they can spend more time enhancing and adding services for customers."

Puppet Enterprise 2016.2
Puppet Enterprise 2016.2 adds new discovery and filtering tools to help you segment your infrastructure, make rapid changes, and troubleshoot faster. The latest release of Puppet Enterprise features:

• New change success reporting - Without accurate situational awareness in the state of infrastructure it's difficult to understand the impact of proposed changes and deploy with confidence. Building on the recent direct change updates to Puppet Enterprise, this release provides a new level of granularity to show which changes were successful, which failed, and which failed but were able to revert to the last known, good state. This means that operators get a clearer sense of how failures affect the environments they are managing.
• Structured and Trusted Facts - Without granular access to metadata about infrastructure, it's challenging for IT 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.