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The Learning VM (Virtual Machine) is a self-contained learning environment that includes everything a new user needs to get started learning Puppet. Because learning Puppet requires making changes to a system's configuration, it's not wise to play with it directly on your own laptop or desktop. Not everyone who wants to learn Puppet, however, has easy access to a system where he or she can experiment freely. And even those who do will benefit from an environment with Puppet Enterprise pre-installed and a set of tools to help guide you through the basics of configuration management with Puppet.

This guide is the companion to the Learning VM. The content of the guide is paired with a quest command line tool on the VM that will provide live feedback as you progress through the list of tasks associated with each quest in this guide. By breaking each concept into a series of incremental and validated steps, we can ensure that you stay on track as you progress through the guide.

This guide should be useful for any reader with an interest in configuration management, system administration, or related tasks. We have done our best to avoid any assumptions about a reader's familiarity with a specific operating system. While users familiar with a Linux command-line interface will already be familiar with most of the commands used in this guide, those more accustomed to a graphical user interface will find all necessary commands provided.

The Learning VM comes with Puppet Enterprise installed, and some of the content is specific to Puppet Enterprise. Users interested in the open source version of Puppet will nonetheless benefit from the majority of the content. Certain features, such as the graphical web console and Application Orchestration tool, are exclusive to Puppet Enterprise. Content related to the Puppet master-agent architecture, Puppet code, and module structure will be generally applicable to the open source version of Puppet, though there are some differences in file locations.