Open‑source Puppet can manage thousands of machines with a single primary server. That server compiles catalogs and pushes them to agents, and even a modest trial box needs only 2 CPU cores, 8 GB RAM and modest disk space. Larger deployments scale hardware according to node count, up to 12 cores for 2,500 nodes.

To avoid single‑point failures, administrators add compile masters in a high‑availability layout; these mirrors share the primary’s configuration and offload catalog work. Supporting components like PuppetDB store facts, catalogs and reports in an external PostgreSQL database, while the primary server runs on RHEL, Ubuntu or Windows Server platforms.

Agents on each node run lightweight processes, checking in roughly every half hour with minimal RAM and CPU. Operators choose among pull‑based server‑agent, masterless, Bolt push or local apply modes, and can isolate code via environments such as production, development or staging. Understanding this baseline lets teams expand automation safely.