10 things i wish i'd known when i started using puppet

10 ThingsI Wish I’d Known When I Started Using Puppet

Paul Anderson paul.anderson@puppet.com

% facter paul

Alliteration => “Affirmative” }

Top500 => “7 systems”,

SME => [ “HPC”, “Supercomputing” ],

Puppet_employee => “9 months”,Puppet_user => “2 years”,

Consultant => “10 years”,{ Admin => “21 years”,

1. Puppet Projects, POCs and Pilots get Pressed into Production

Plan for Production

2. Puppet Code is Powerful“With great power comes great responsibility”

- Uncle Ben Parker

6

With Puppet You Get:

Beware the siren call of the exec resource!

Desired State Model

Fact-based Configuration Management

System State Information

Reporting & Audit Trails

Catalog Idempotency

Consistent Additive Improvement

3. No Obfuscated Puppet CodeBrilliant Puppet code is easy to read, not indecipherable…Don’t get stuck maintaining your codebase forever

CONFIDENTIAL – IF NOT, DELETE THIS LINE

4. Start with focus on timeFree yourself up to tackle bigger challenges

1. Quick ROI2. Free up time3. Build Trust

(Then comes Oracle, Websphere, etc.)

5. Start with what you knowDon’t learn puppet at the same time you’re learning new tech

case $equus {

‘horse’: { include puppet }

‘zebra’: { include admin }

}

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6. Use Abstraction WellArchitect your codebase so it scales and is maintainable

Roles and Profiles

Server = $$$

Role Module

Profile Module

Component Module

Class

Resources

16

7. Facts Steer the Catalog(and sometimes the other way around)

Facts Steer the Catalog

Facts Steer the Catalog

Agent (Facts) Master (Catalog)

Custom facts:java_version => “1.7.0_60”

if versioncmp($java_version, ‘1.8.0’) < 0 {include java_updater

}

class java_updater {installers, execs, purges, hardening, etc.}

8. Put a Version on it!

Put a Version on it!Check everything into VCS

Work with Packages

Use r10k with Control Repo and Env.

Tarballs – jordansissel/fpmWindows – good ol’ choco?

Clear, predictable workflowAdd process/people to scale

Promotes Transparency and Trust

21

9. Organizational Change is Difficult

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“There’s no better way to overpower a trickle of doubt than with a flood of naked truth”

- Frank Underwood

23

Simulate

Communicate

Enable

CONFIDENTIAL – IF NOT, DELETE THIS LINE

10. You’re not alone!The community and Puppet team have your back!

• Look left, look right, 3/3 of you are interested in Puppet

• Ask.puppet.com

• Learn.puppet.com (self-paced training)

• Forge.puppet.com

• #puppet on freenode

• https://www.youtube.com/user/PuppetLabsInc

• @puppetize

• Voxpupuli.org

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/puppet-users

• https://puppetcommunity.slack.com/

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Questions?

root@localhost:/etc/sysctl.d# facter networking.interfaces.eth0{ bindings => [ { address => "10.0.2.15", netmask => "255.255.255.0", network => "10.0.2.0" } ], bindings6 => [ { … } ], dhcp => "10.0.2.2", ip => "10.0.2.15",…}

Facter: networking.interfaces.eth0.ipPP: ${::facts[networking][interfaces][eth0][ip]}ERB: <%= @facts['networking']['interfaces']['eth0']['ip'] %>