A final note on third-party applications

As you've seen, with the correct Ruby libraries and some creative Ruby code, you can allow Puppet to communicate with pretty much any third-party product. These days, it's almost a given that there is an API, and on the Puppet Forge, you can already see some exciting examples of report processors ranging from alerts via instant message through to logging deployment data into systems such as New Relic. When you come to look at your own report processors, be creative and remember that Puppet is rapidly becoming the first place where changes occur, which makes it the perfect early warning system for impending issues. By thinking about report processors both as a reporting mechanism and, perhaps more importantly, an alerting system, you can create some fantastic ways to keep yourself apprised of change within your Puppet-managed infrastructure.