Instant Puppet 3 starter

50 Pages·2013·0.784 MB·English

by  Jo Rhett

Instant Puppet 3 Starter
Gain complete consistency from your systems with
minimal effort using Instant Puppet 3 Starter
Jo Rhett
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Instant Puppet 3 Starter
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
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First published: March 2013
Production Reference: 1200313
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78216-174-5
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Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Jo Rhett Sherin Padayatty
Reviewer Proofreader
Chris Spence Mario Cecere
Acquisition Editor Production Coordinator
Akram Hussain Conidon Miranda
Commissioning Editor Cover Work
Yogesh Dalvi Conidon Miranda
Technical Editor Cover Image
Varun Pius Rodrigues Conidon Miranda
Copy Editor
Ruta Waghmare
About the Author
Jo Rhett is a DevOps engineer who has been using, promoting, and enhancing configuration
management systems for over 20 years. He implemented package management functionality
in CFEngine v2, before moving on to use Puppet daily for the last three years.
I’d like to thank Puppet Labs for continuing to support and grow the open
source Puppet project. I’d also like to acknowledge the timely and extensive
support provided by the diverse Puppet community through IRC and mailing
list support. Puppet has become a fantastic tool through their commitment to
the project.
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Table of Contents
Instant Puppet 3 Starter 1
So what is Puppet 3? 3
Building your starter server 4
Deterministic results 4
Installation 7
Step 1 – Preparing the host 7
Removing old versions of the software 7
Puppet client requirements 7
Puppet server requirements 7
Step 2 – Installing Puppet 8
Step 3 – Configuring the server 9
How Puppet authentication works 9
Step 4 – Starting up the server 10
Step 5 – Testing your first client 10
Quick start – Using the core Puppet resource types 13
Step 1 – Enabling the Puppet service 13
Step 2 – Managing software and services 14
Step 3 – Customizing one node 15
Step 4 – Synchronizing files and directories 16
Building a custom module 17
Class parameters 19
Member classes 20
Conditionals 21
Module files 21
Module templates 22
Referring to other resources 23
Setting defaults for resources 23
Notifying resources of changes 24
Controlling actions with schedules 24
Module philosophy 25
Table of Contents
Top 5 features you need to know about 26
Reviewing system changes 26
File report store 26
Tagmail report processor 27
Puppet Dashboard 27
Custom report processors 28
Comparing and restoring files 28
Using environments to test changes 29
Testing your code 30
Release engineering 30
Running the Puppet server under Passenger 30
Using external data in your Puppet policy 32
Configuring Hiera data location 33
Creating Hiera data 33
Using Hiera data in a Puppet module 34
Learning more 35
People and places you should get to know 36
Official site 36
Community support 36
The Puppet Forge 36
Articles and tutorials 36
In-depth details 37
The Puppet language 37
Related projects 37
About Packt Publishing 39
Writing for Packt 39
[ ii ]
Instant Puppet 3 Starter
Welcome to the Instant Puppet 3 Starter. This book will provide you with all the
information that you need to set up and use Puppet 3. You will learn the core
components of Puppet, set up a working client and server, and start building
your first custom module.
This book contains the following sections:
So what is Puppet 3? – In this section, we find out what Puppet does, how it works,
and how it can drastically improve the consistency of your systems while reducing
the effort involved in maintaining them. Learn about the difference between
deterministic and procedural results. Most importantly, learn how to get better
results every time by thinking about and expressing your desired outcome in a
deterministic fashion.
Installation – In this section, learn how to download and install Puppet 3. Learn how
to get your environment working immediately, without needing help from others.
Quick start – This section will show you how to use the core methods included
within Puppet to reduce the amount of manual work and rework you do every
day. Then you’ll learn how to write a custom Puppet module to do something
important and necessary for you. By the end of this section, you’ll have Puppet
working throughout your environment.
Top 5 features you need to know about – In this section you will learn how to
perform five useful tasks for managing and expanding your Puppet ecosystem. By
the end of this section, you will be able to review the history of changes made to
your systems by Puppet, compare and restore the previous versions of files that
were changed by Puppet, build a test environment for developing new modules,
use an external data source for your configuration policies, and run the Puppet
server as a Ruby on Rails application to improve performance.
People and places you should get to know – Puppet has a very active developer and
user community. This section provides you with many useful links to the project
page and mailing lists, as well as a number of helpful articles and tutorials.