Puppet is a cross-platform system for managing machines. It can manage files, packages, users and anything else that needs managing. The system is composed of a puppetd daemon process running on a client machine, which periodically connects to a remote puppetmaster to download its configuration and apply it. All communication and file transfers between the client and puppetmaster are done via XML/RPC over SSL.

If you'd like to know more about what else puppet can do or how it works, reductivelabs has an excellent introduction. This article will instead focus on how to set up an environment for measuring the throughput of the puppetmaster.