Puppet, the popular configuration management tool, can get tricky at times. After a few months of using Puppet to manage our servers at work, a few practices have emerged as good, recommendable practices. I wanted to share a few of them with the rest of the world here so that beginners get a head start but also to get a good base for discussion with more seasoned Puppet users. Read more...

We’ve recently started using Puppet to provision our servers really seriously at work. All of our new servers are systematically provisioned using Puppet, and we now have a rule that nothing on servers can be changed by hand, every single bit needs to be managed by Puppet. Managing servers using Puppet is extremely useful and powerful, but you also need to know what you’re doing because a small untested change in your Puppet manifests could introduce instability (or worse! Read more...

Organizations today are always looking for ways to improve how they build software. To stay competitive on fast-paced markets, they have to optimize the delivery pipeline to bring features from ideation to market more rapidly. Many rightfully seek solutions by adopting agile or lean practices. To be fully effective, these methodologies also need to be supported by rigorous engineering practices such as those brought forward by Extreme Programming. Executed correctly, these are all very good ways of optimizing the way you and your team build your software. Read more...