Puppet allowed e-commerce company Shopzilla to automate the process of deploying internal cloud services for their customers. Using Puppet, Shopzilla could build new server configurations within seconds and deliver them on-demand, eliminating weeks of manual work. This helped improve turnaround times for customers and ensured consistent environments. Puppet also reduced the need to communicate with customers, saving Shopzilla valuable time and resources.

1. puppet
labs Case Study
“Puppet has allowed us to move to a new
cloud environment that we simply could
not have done with our old methodology.
In doing so, we were able to seamlessly
integrate our current procedures and
PUPPET WAS THE ESSENTIAL
configuration management into our
cloud to help us build our systems
ELEMENT ALLOWING
within seconds, not weeks like before.
Simply put, Puppet is a integral tool
SHOPZILLA TO ROLL OUT
we use to successfully maintain our
virtualized environment on a daily basis.”
- Greg Bradner, Senior Manager of Systems
Administration Engineering, Shopzilla CLOUD SERVICES TO THEIR
INDUSTRY:
INTERNAL CUSTOMERS
E-commerce Shopzilla is one of the largest and most comprehensive online shopping
networks on the web. As a leading global comparison shopping site and
CHALLENGE: pioneer in user-generated product ratings and reviews content, Shopzilla
Internal cloud deployment provides a virtual environment that helps shoppers find the best value
SOLUTION: for anything they want to purchase from thousands of online retailers.
Puppet selected over Cfengine With increasing development requests coming from internal customers
and developers through the company’s Intranet-based cloud computing
RESULTS: environment, Shopzilla needed a tool that could quickly and accurately build
Manage 3,000 virtualized machines new server configurations, deliver them to their customers on-demand for as
while improving turnaround long as they needed them, and release the resources when they were finished.
and system consistency
STARTING ENVIRONMENT KEY OBJECTIVES
• Managed over 3,000 highly virtualized machines running on Linux • Reliable & Easy to Use – Ensure a highly
servers in an enterprise computing environment, with operating sites reliable, easy-to-use computing environment for
in the US, UK, France and Germany. customers to develop, build, test and run their
• Responsible for the day-to-day operations of data centers worldwide, applications.
ensuring 99.9% uptime of Shopzilla’s Web site, and monitoring all • Automate the Build Process – Eliminate
application rollouts and user needs. existing time-consuming processes to understand
• In order to set up configurations that build up and tear down the customers’ specific needs and build system
machines multiple times per day, Shopzilla needed to streamline the applications. Without Puppet, users would
request and delivery process. have to work directly with IT to define the
development environment they needed. Ongoing
• Prior to Puppet, Shopzilla used a shell script with SCP and copied dialog with customers often times delayed this
files to all of their machines. This was a very time-intensive process process, which could take up to two weeks before
that could not guarantee a consistent environment or meet the new a system was up and running.
demands of its cloud environment.
• High Quality & Efficiency – Reduce the time
• The key challenge was to find an automated solution that took it takes to deliver accurate configurations of all
Shopzilla completely out of the process, allowing its internal applications to ensure a consistent environment
developers to request their own development environment and for their internal customers.
return them when they were finished.

2. puppet
labs Case Study
“Puppet has completely
changed the way we operate.
By automating the request
BENEFITS OBTAINED
and delivery process, we • Quicker Turnaround – Using Puppet to automate the request and delivery process,
no longer have to manually Shopzilla no longer has to spend huge amounts of time communicating back and
build configurations or spend forth with the customer. Reduced interaction with the customer has resulted in
loads of time interacting with quicker turnarounds and huge time and cost savings for Shopzilla.
customers to understand • System Consistency – Puppet provides a consistent, clean environment for
their specific requirements. customers to develop, build and run their applications on demand. By completely
Puppet does that for us. By streamlining the build process, there are no changes, no surprises, and the customer
reducing the time it takes gets exactly what they expect.
to deliver accurate system
• Greater Customer Satisfaction – Quick delivery of highly accurate system
configurations, we save
applications allows Shopzilla’s internal customers to know exactly what environment
valuable time and resources
they’re going to be testing their systems on, and exceeds their high expectations.
while meeting our customers’
needs and expectations.”
- Greg Bradner, Senior Manager WHY PUPPET?
of Systems Administration
• Ease of Use – After evaluating both Puppet and Cfengine, Shopzilla chose Puppet
Engineering, Shopzilla
because it was easy to understand, implement and maintain. According to Shopzilla,
Puppet proved to be far less complicated and provided additional benefits for system
configuration.
• Exceed Customer Expectations – Puppet helps Shopzilla maintain a complete
configuration from machine to machine without any worries of deviation, thereby
delivering exactly what the customer needs and expects.
• Virtualized Environment Support – In order to fully realize the benefits of a
private cloud and virtualized computing environments, Shopzilla leveraged Puppet’s
capabilities to define and reuse a system configuration on-demand.
About Puppet Labs
Puppet Labs develops and
commercially supports Puppet, the
leading open source platform for
enterprise systems management.
With millions of nodes under
management and thousands of
users, including Twitter, NYSE,
Zynga, Genentech, Match.com,
eBay, NYU, and Oracle, Puppet
standardizes the way IT staff deploy
and manage infrastructure in the
enterprise and the cloud.
www.puppetlabs.com
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Portland OR 97209
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