It is straightforward, allows a versatile grouping of coded manifests to build a variety of not only server tiers, but also a variety of server tiers inside a variety of datacenters or environments. It is centralized, works for linux and windows, and makes managing large numbers of servers a snap. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The puppetmaster console is extremely buggy and should be rewritten from the ground up. It also has no way to specify particular roles for users, in the case that multiple applications are managed from the console, all users either have full admin rights over all application classifications, read-only rights, or no rights at all.

There is also a steep learning curve regarding heiradata and its integration with modules vs. profiles. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Puppet Enterprise makes its easy to get rolling. For me, I didn't have the time to piece together all the moving, opensource pieces. This is well done, and allowed me to get up and running in a short about of time.

While you can dig into the under-covers of the language if you want (Ruby), you don't have to. Their "manifest" language is easy to get your head around. I recommend obtaining their Learning VM and playing around with the tech locally.

The big bonus for me is I needed to quickly manage multiple clusters of Elasticsearch and standardize config across all. When I learned that their forge repo had a module already built for it I jumped right in and never looked back. I can now quickly scale and add / modify clusters -- without worrying about setup. I just tell puppet to do it. It's a HUGE time saver and I highly recommend.

I am just starting to scratch the surface here, but their forge contains many opportunities for you to standardize your server configs across your enterprise using pre-built modules that you can tap into. Other tech out there, you have to learn EVERYTHING from scratch. Not with puppet. I am mostly utilizing it on the linux side of the house, but there are plenty of use cases for Windows too. Using their chocolatey module from the community forge, you can "package install" IIS, .net frameworks, and a ton of other roles, features, and software packages -- already ready to go.

I am also able to declare groups of manifests for different environments -- spanning across multiple nodes. I can declare similar or unique configs across the enterprise. So far DEV I have a set, Testing a set, etc. I can also finally manage user accounts in one place. And in my case it's admins - sudoers. But what a relief, knowing I can roll out new admin accounts quickly.

Don't pass up PE. It's very worth it! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Spawning from opensource -- they are in the process of getting their support streamlined for the Enterprise side of the house. So at times, my support experience with them has been a little shaky. However, not to say that it's bad.. it's just they have room to grow right now. The good thing is they are getting much better at it, and are listening to me as a customer. The community is also vibrant so that helps lift the burden a bit and I will also echo that their docs and online examples are good. In summary they are up-ramping their enterprise support and getting better as we go along. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The flexibility to create recipe to orchestrate our provisioning. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It can becomes too much flexible and create confusion but this is more a problem from the architect then the product itself. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.