Proposed Session Title: Puppetizing your Organization: Taking Puppet from a Proof of Concept to the Configuration Management Tool of Choice
Proposed Session Description: You've shown off a proof of concept and your organization has chosen to move forward with Puppet. What now? We'll examine successful methods you can employ to integrate Puppet with your culture and tooling as well as what to avoid.
What we want to do:
Accept that initial efforts won't be perfect (and that's okay!)
Accept that failure is an important part of growth
Use version control and code reviews every time
Use r10k, Hiera, and the Role/Profile pattern
Test our code (rspec/beaker)
Replace manual application deployment with deployment via Puppet
Continuous improvement
Encourage culture improvement iterations
Start with baby steps: crawl before you walk
Solve one problem correctly at a time
Share with others, learn from others
What we want to avoid:
Forcing culture changes
Moving too fast for colleagues/management/others to keep up with
Solving many problems poorly
Being an "Expert Beginner"
What do you want the audience to gain from your session? (125 words) Participants will be given an understanding of technical and culture challenges they may encounter as their own Puppet implementations grow. They will gain the knowledge and confidence to move forward and avoid or minimize many common pitfalls. They will return to their team, ready to lead their coworkers in their cultural and technical evolution.
Have you written or presented about this topic before? I've written over 40 articles (http://rnelson0.com/puppet-for-vsphere-admins/) that explore my own journey from proof of concept to a production environment. Much of my content will be exploring these topics and expanding beyond the contents of a technical blog.