In this chapter, we looked at the various problems that configuration management tools can help solve, and how Puppet in particular models the aspects of system configuration. We checked out the Git repository of example code for this book, installed VirtualBox and Vagrant, started the Vagrant VM, and ran Puppet for the first time.

In the next chapter, we'll write our first Puppet manifests, get some insight into the structure of Puppet resources and how they're applied, and learn about the package, file, and service resources.