We (another group at Fermilab) have used Puppet for a couple of years now 
to manage a few thousand systems, with good results.  As Steve and Jamie 
both noted, it's essentially a new language to learn, though a fairly 
simple and well-behaved one.  There are many user-contributed modules 
available, etc.

We switched from cfengine, which is a viable alternative but has some 
limitations that we wanted to get past.

Glenn


At 1:29pm on Thu, 21 Feb 2013, Steven Timm wrote:

> Large puppet community at Fermilab--I started using it a few months ago and 
> have been able to get productive and do a lot of things with it
> very quickly.  Many of its config files are written in a Ruby-like syntax so 
> Ruby training pays off with faster learning time.
>
> Steve Timm
>
>
> On Thu, 21 Feb 2013, Yasha Karant wrote:
>
>> Does anyone have experience with puppet from URL:
>> 
>> https://puppetlabs.com/
>> 
>> ?
>> 
>> If so, positive and/or negative observations are requested, as well as 
>> practical alternatives.
>> 
>> Yasha Karant
>> 
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steven C. Timm, Ph.D  (630) 840-8525
> [log in to unmask]  http://home.fnal.gov/~timm/
> Fermilab Computing Division, Scientific Computing Facilities,
> Grid Facilities Department, FermiGrid Services Group, Group Leader.
> Lead of FermiCloud project.
>