VMware gets in on Puppet show

VMware has joined Google and Cisco as a new investor in Puppet Labs, according to a press release issued today.

VMware was one of the investors that contributed to an $8.5 million round of funding for the IT systems automation software maker, bringing Puppet’s total funding to $15.75 million since its founding in 2005.

Puppet’s software, available as both an open source offering and in a commercial version called Puppet Enterprise, automates provisioning of VMware and Amazon EC2 instances in enterprise IT environments. IT shops have also used the open-source version of Puppet to increase server-to-admin ratios. Demand for experience with Puppet’s software has grown rapidly in the last year, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

VMware and Cisco “have hands-on, in-production-at-scale experience with Puppet – in some cases, going back several years,” wrote Puppet founder Luke Kanies in a blog post on the funding round.