Puppet

Configuration Management Tool for Declarative Desired State Server Management

• Master Server Architecture
• Puppet Primary Server .. stores code and defines the desired state
  • For big scale Deployments there are Compiled Master configurations and Master of Master (MOM)
• Puppet Agent … translate state into commands
• Facter is Puppets Inventory Tool which gathers facts about an Agent.
  • These facts make up the Manifest of an agent.
    • A Manifest is Ruby file with the .pp extension.
    • It consists of Classes and Resources
  • The Server compiles a catalog, which defines the state of the agent and are executed on the Agent.

Misc

• Puppet Code & Manifests are kept in Modules
• Puppet stores data in PuppetDB
• Puppet Bold can be used for Agentless devices
• Servers and Agents communicate via HTTPs on TCP and SSL certificates
• Puppet includes a built-in certificate authority for managing certificates

Flow

1. The Agents create Certificates to be signed to the Primary Server
2. The written Manifest is compiled into a Catalog by the Primary Server and deployed to the Agents
3. The Agents execute the Catalog and send back a Report to the Primary Server

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Pros

• Strong Open Source Community

Cons

• Requires learning Ruby

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Commands

Agents

# list certss sent to master
puppet cert list
 
# check for changes from the master and apply the test
puppet agent --test

Primary Server

# sign certs on master
puppet cert sign --all

Example File

file { '/root/some-file': 
  ensure => present, 
}