The way IT operations teams deploy and manage their infrastructure is constantly evolving. The latest developments in containers and container scheduling technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, and Mesos, especially, have gotten a lot of attention, and more and more people in IT and software development are adopting these solutions — and deploying infrastructure in the cloud — all the time.

Managing this modern infrastructure isn't a trivial task — and that's exactly what Puppet is here for. In this post, I am summarizing for you some of the excellent talks that were given at PuppetConf 2016 on container technologies and how Puppet fits into this new IT ecosystem. These talks — all captured on video — really are a must-watch if you are using these technologies, and even more so if you are thinking about adopting them.

Containers and Configuration Management: Should I Really Care?

With the move to using containers you may ask yourself, "Do I still need to worry about configuration management?" You absolutely do.

Puppet CTO Deepak Giridharagopal gave a must-watch talk, Docker, Mesos, Kubernetes, and Puppet? Don't panic! Deepak talked about the new technologies that can be managed with Puppet, and how the need for configuration management is just as great — if not greater than ever — as we increasingly rely on software to fully model and manage all of our applications, supporting services, and even the underlying hardware. Deepak highlights the fact that your ability to unlock and benefit from all of these modern software abstractions is possible only because of successful and mature configuration management practices. As Deepak said, "You gotta have this much automation to ride the ride.”