In this chapter, we've taken a very quick look at the history and usages of PuppetDB. We've taken a look at the underlying technology that powers it and learned that although it ships with an in-memory database, the best practice when using it is to install and utilize a PostgreSQL database for its data store. We went into detail about how you can configure and install PuppetDB, from the initial package installation of PuppetDB and PostgreSQL to the details on how to configure both the products so that they can communicate.

In the next chapter, we're going to explore ways to use PuppetDB to view your data. We're going to learn how the PuppetDB API works and go through some examples of how simple and powerful it is to query this well-performing data store.