Case Study: Chockstone achieves consistent, documented, and efficient server infrastructure with Puppet

Chockstone Uses Puppet to Bring Order to Their Infrastructure

Chockstone, a Portland-based customer loyalty company used by leading brands across more than 46,000 locations, was acquired by Heartland Payment Systems in 2008 and faced a fragile, ad-hoc Solaris infrastructure. With two data centers holding about 50 Sun servers across SPARC and x86, there was little documentation and each machine was unique, making scaling, maintenance, and knowledge transfer unsustainable.

Chockstone implemented Puppet, backed by a Puppet Wiki and Puppet Professional Services, to enforce consistent configurations, document system state and automate provisioning. The deployment produced efficient server management, repeatable, consistent configurations, reduced maintenance overhead, better documentation for future sysadmins, and opportunities for staff to develop marketable Puppet skills.

Chockstone

Derek Olsen

Unix Systems Administrator, Heartland Payment Systems