Custom types and providers
If we had to name a single feature that defines Puppet, it would probably be its approach to the management of systems resources.
The abstraction layer that types and providers provide saves us from worrying about implementations on different operating systems of the resources we want on them.
This is a strong and powerful competitive edge of Puppet, and the thing that makes it even more interesting is the possibility of easily creating custom types and providers and seamlessly distributing them to clients.
Types and providers are the components of Puppet's Resource Abstracton Layer; even if strongly coupled, they do different things:
Types abstract a physical resource and specify the interface to its management exposing parameters and properties that allow users to model the resource as desired.
Providers implement on the system the types' specifications, adapting to different operating systems. They need to be able to query the current status of a resource and to...
