Puppet Rolls Out New Docker Image Builds

Folks who are focused on container technology and virtual machines as they are implemented today might want to give a hat tip to some of the early technologies and platforms that arrived in the same arena. Among those, Puppet, which was built on the legacy of the venerable Cfengine system, was an early platform that helped automate lots of virtual machine implementations. We covered it in depth all the way back in 2008.

Earlier this year, Puppet Labs rebranded as simply Puppet, and also named its first president and COO, Sanjay Mirchandani, who came to the company from VMware, where he was a senior vice-president. Now, at PuppetConf, the company has announced the availability of Puppet Docker Image Build, which "automates the container build process to help organizations as they define, build and deploy containers into production environments." This new set of capabilities adds to existing Puppet functionality for installing and managing container infrastructure, including Docker, Kubernetes and Mesos, among others.

Puppet clais it is focused on giving organizations a standard, consistent way to install Docker operating environments as well as build and deploy containers using the same code they rely on to automate the delivery and operation of all of their software -- whether it's in the datacenter, the cloud or on containers.

"For the last decade, Puppet has enabled organizations to adopt the latest technologies and everything running on top of it, including virtualization, public and private clouds and now containers," said Deepak Giridharagopal, CTO at Puppet. "Over the last year, our work around containers has been focused on helping customers install and operate next-gen infrastructure. Now we're extending management to the software running on top of those environments to enable organizations to both build new services and move existing services to containers."

Puppet says it is extending its focus up the stack to give organizations a consistent way to deploy any services that run in containers.  The company adds:

"This consistent approach to automation, from core operating environments through the software that runs on top, makes Puppet a critical bridge to the future for organizations that want to safely and rapidly adopt containers in addition to maintaining their existing physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure."

"With Puppet Docker Image Build, organizations get a familiar, predictable way to define and deploy the services that run on Docker containers. Puppet's domain-specific language supports powerful ways of reusing application configurations, regardless of the underlying infrastructure they run on. Because Puppet provides a straightforward way to move existing services to containers without needing to redefine those services or reinvent the wheel, organizations can get the services they already have deployed to containers and running in production, faster."

 "With Puppet Docker Image Build, you’ll get a familiar, predictable way to define and deploy the services you want to run in Docker containers," Puppet engineers noted. "Puppet’s domain-specific language (DSL) supports powerful ways of reusing application configurations, regardless of the underlying infrastructure they run on."

 "As we ramp up our container usage, we're investing in solutions that scale alongside us as we move more of our services to containerized environments, while at the same time work within the parameters of our traditional infrastructure," said Jason Meltzer, director of technology at Fannie Mae. "We're excited about this announcement because it makes it possible to move a service from traditional infrastructure to a containerized environment with the tools we use today to manage everything from databases, to app servers, to services running in containers."

 Puppet Docker Image Build is available today and you can find out more here.