The book is easy to understand and simple, but totally ignores even mentioning that puppet can be used in a master-agent model, he just sticks to one methond of replicating configuration changes - which is using git - and totally ignores even mentioning a heavily used method like master-agent configuration.
Very easy to follow book on Puppet, I managed to learns some key concepts of puppet such as package (install software package and versioning), service (manage services), file (check file exists and create files, etc), exec (running commands), user (create user and user access control and ssl), template (create template files in erb files for adaptive configuration), cron (scheduling), class, modules, nodes and import (puppet files structuring) and the very nice Facter tool from Puppet
Puppet is one of the leading configuration management tools. If you are a system administrator you MUST know how to use these kind of tools: in a time when installing and configuring an OS is almost a commodity you have to learn to to bring automation to the next level. To learn how to use Puppet in an effective way is not a painless process: you have to understand some basic concepts, which are not always so obvious, and have to know enough of Puppet language to be able to make it do what you need. If you are a Puppet beginner, this book really helps and succeeds in giving you the right and practical information you need to start with Puppet. Topics are exposed with a clear language and useful real-life examples are provided and explained. Definitively recommended for beginners.
This introductory level book covers a lot of ground and then points you in the right direction...next read Puppet 3 Cookbook. The examples and explanations are good and the author informs of when he deviates from Puppet recomendations based on his experience. If you are new to Puppet this is a great intro.
The best book for beginners in Puppet 3! The book exercises are simple and explained step-by-step, even in bash and Linux commands and how they are related to Puppet declarations. All exercises are connected, making you provisioning a basic webserver.
The only things that I felt missing is a final part with advanced topics to go after.
Great read if you're just starting out with Puppet and need to get up to speed fast. The official guide is a good start, but doesn't recommend any simple "best practices" that one can begin with. The book makes a good job of proposing quite a few of these, without overcomplicating things.
provides good coverage of Puppet while testing some of the specifics of deploying manifests. I feel confident that I have learned enough to make a solid start on a Puppet project