Final thoughts

The journey to automation happiness is not one that happens overnight. Often times, the tasks ahead of you can seem daunting. However, there is a simple method that I use to approach such problems when they arise. Simply, start with your area of greatest pain. If you spend a lot of time reviewing logs on systems, then start using Puppet to implement centralized logging. If it's user and account creation, then start there.

The operations industry as a whole is beginning to embrace the concepts that were introduced in Japan after World War II. The description of the concepts often uses the word lean. There are several important concepts I will leave you with.

The first is Kata. Kata is the art of practicing something to obtain mastery. Growing up, you often did this in school, especially with math. As with those, you must practice your art to get better at it. As you engage in automating your environment with Puppet—either to make your life easier or to appease auditors...