Puppet Enterprise vs. Splunk IT Essentials

Puppet is good enough to get the job done, you can use it to automate deployments and maintain files and configurations, if this is all you're looking for it's great. If you're looking for more control over your systems as a whole without having to write your own scripts or install multiple configuration management systems then Puppet is not what you're looking for.

Incentivized

Splunk IT Essentials scales really well and is quite suitable for large enterprise environments which is where I use it. It can easily handle the classification and ingest of metrics/log data from thousands of devices. It also allows for easy grouping of these devices so that users can search just for Windows devices, or just for Linux machines. Provides a great overview of enterprise health while allowing deeper dives into the device level of data.

Incentivized

• Provides a clear map of how a system is configured
• Eases the creation of a system in a specific cluster as it is scripted in code
• Simplifies configuration changes to a cluster or to every system such as rolling out vhost configurations, updating ldap roles, NFS mounts, etc
• The syntax is very easy to read and carries a lot of fluidity once the language is learned.

Incentivized

• Real time enterprise health monitoring
• Metrics ingest, parsing, and visualization
• Investigating and troubleshooting problems that arise with devices

Incentivized

• The setup of Puppet is a nightmare compared to ansible. Anyone watching a youtube video can easily set up ansible with minimal IT knowledge. All one needs is the source IP addresses and we are good to go. Setting up Puppet is a more hands-on task and pushing the puppet agents to all the boxes is another issue. If the installation and setup were simplified like ansible that would attract a lot of people to this platform
• The syntax of the code for Puppet is not as easy as ansible. Ansible simply follows a YAML format and it's like typing in normal English. Even complicated tasks can be written by just understanding YAML syntax. Perhaps Puppet needs to revisit the lanugage used and try to come up with a much simpler lanugage for writing code. This will make day-to-day usage easier.

Incentivized

• Currently need to special request this app on Splunk Cloud
• Not compatible with older versions of Splunk

Incentivized

Puppet has top class support. You can simply mail them with their query and they will respond to your query in a timely manner. We do have enterprise license for puppet. Also there is a vibrant community for puppet out there. So even if you dont purchase a premium support option you can simply google your queries and get answers

Incentivized

HPSA is a licensed product and incurs significant upfront investment costs due to COTS licensing. Puppet Data Center Automation has a significantly lower upfront investment and product documentation is more readily available. Chef is a very similar offering, however, at the time our decision was considered, the adoption of Chef vs. Puppet was significantly less in the community.

Incentivized

If you've used any Splunk product then you know they have a good reputation for creating smart and user-friendly tools. Splunk IT Essentials is no different and I have had nothing but positive experiences with it. It was a straightforward integration with our enterprise environment. And it can also be leverage, as we did, when moving to ITSI as well.

Incentivized

• Cut deployment times down to around 1 hour from 4-5 hours.
• Allows us to get a fully running system up from scratch in around 30 minutes.
• Allows for a more clear view of what is required to get a host running.

Incentivized

• Huge time saver in troubleshooting issues in the environment
• Alerts allow for much quicker response time to certain events that require attention
• Able to leverage this app when transitioning to ITSI

Incentivized