Puppet Enterprise vs. VMware Cloud Director

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

If you have a lot of customers that all need to have a separate place to work in, without the possibility of getting in each other way, and you want to safe yourself a lot of work. Than I strongly recommend you Cloud director. Ofcourse, only if you have a VMware environment as your working environment. If you just have a small group of customers and you can easily handle the work that's coming from it, then it is overkill to add cloud director to your environment. In a later station, you can always introduce cloud director (so tis never to late if you still want to use it)

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

• Building virtual racks
• Managing the customers' network and security
• Simplicity but the completeness of IaaS solution
• Integration with major software providers

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

• The add-on/extension required on the internet browser sometimes are difficult to get working at first. We've experience instances where the add-on/extension latest versions will not work and have to downgrade to an older version.
• The server console lacks features and tools. For example it would be useful to have a copy and paste tool or a file upload tool.
• The vCloud Director management site uses Adobe Flash, which makes it impossible to use on a mobile device.

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

vCloud Director is definitely my favorite as far as cloud managers. The only thing that compares is Cisco UCS Director, but it has slightly different functionality and purpose. I understand why a lot of clients still go with vCloud Director even though VMware intends to sunset it

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

• Saves a lot of time, and time is money
• Stable, so little to non downtime
• With P1 , good support

Incentivized