In this chapter, we have explored less traditional territories for Puppet. We have gone beyond server operating systems and have seen how it is possible to also manage network and storage equipment, and how Puppet can help in working with the cloud and with containers.

We have seen that there are two general approaches to the management of devices: the proxy one, which is mostly implemented by the puppet device application and has a specific operational approach, and the native one, where Puppet runs directly on the managed devices, where it behaves like a normal node.

We have also reviewed the modules available to manage virtualization and cloud-related setups. Some of them configure normal resources on a system, others expand the Puppet application to allow creation and interaction with cloud instances.

Puppet is well placed for the future challenges that a software defined data center involves, but its evolution is an ongoing process on many fields.

In the next chapter, we are going to explore how Puppet is evolving and what we can expect from the next versions.