We have heavily invested in writing puppet modules. Now we have a requirement to use puppet in agent less mode in one of our environment for that we are planing using puppet bolt.
My question is if we write puppet plan in puppet dsl. Can we target those plans to a remote VM if it’s not having puppet agent installed.
-Vinay
The target system needs an interpreter or it won't understand the code you're sending it. The same as if you write a Bolt task in Python, you need Python on the target machine for it to be able to run the code.
But a Bolt Plan has inbuilt tasks to handle this, here's an example plan to install git via chocolatey with a bolt plan;
plan git_install::Windows_git (
TargetSpec $targets
) {
apply_prep($targets) # This installs the PE agent temporarily so it can
include chocolatey # include and use regular Puppet class from the chocolatey module
package { git :
ensure. => 'present',
provider => 'chocolatey',
}
}
If you already have the target connecting to a PE server you probably don't need to use apply_prep though as the agent is already installed.
This is a real life saver though if you have to manage a legacy infrastructure alongside a PE managed infrastructure as at the time of writing a PE module you can create a plan only a couple of lines long that'll allow you to reuse the same class on your legacy infrastructure.
You do not need to install anything on a target upfront in order to run a plan that executes tasks on the target (if that is what you are asking). If you mean that you are using Bolt's ability to apply puppet resources then Bolt will install the puppet agent package without you having to do anything. See details in the documentation here: https://puppet.com/docs/bolt/latest/applying_manifest_blocks.html
Related
I'm new to Puppet. I want to install any package or software on my new linux machine where Ubuntu installed. I have gone through puppet forge modules in their portal.
There are plenty of modules available but I'm not getting how to run them.
Looks like in all puppet forge modules, puppet language script used. I guess we need to install puppet first in linux machine.
I came to know that we have server and client puppet master and puppet agent. Do we need to install both on my linux machine to run puppet forge scripts?
How to install puppet on linux ubuntu machine and where to run puppet forge module scripts among master and agent?
Do we need 2 linux machines each for puppet server and client?
Puppet is targeted at managing multi-computer installations. It can be used on an isolated machine (you would install both the master and the agent on that machine), but you are likely to make more work for yourself that way, not less, especially given that you have no prior experience with Puppet.
Looks like in all puppet forge modules, puppet language script used.I guess we need to install puppet first in linux machine.
Pedantically, the Puppet language is not a scripting language. But yes, Puppet modules are written primarily in Puppet's domain-specific language. You need Puppet to use them.
I came to know that we have server and client puppet master and puppet
agent.Do we need to install both on my linux machine to run puppet
forge scripts.
Unless you want to set up a second machine for the master to run on, yes, you would need to install both the master and the agent on your machine. Puppet used to support a direct-apply mode, but that is no longer an option.
How to install puppet on linux ubuntu machine and where to run puppet
forge module scripts among master and agent.
Puppet has extensive online documentation. The section on installing Puppet is here: https://puppet.com/docs/puppet/latest/installing_and_upgrading.html.
Note also that installing the software is not all you would need to do. Puppet modules are not programs. They are somewhat like subroutines. You would also need at least to write some Puppet code of your own to specify just how (using the modules of your choice) you want Puppet to configure your machine.
Do we need 2 linux machines each for puppet server and client.
No. You can run the agent on the machine that hosts the master. Many sites do that, in fact, but it is rare for that to be the only place where the agent runs.
Generally speaking, you need to have several machines under Puppet management to achieve a net win relative to managing your machines directly. It really doesn't sound to me like Puppet would be a good fit for you.
For your use case, it seems like using Puppet Bolt is the better option.
As stated by John Bollinger, Puppet has very good online documentation on their products, and it's no different with Bolt:
Installing Bolt on Ubuntu
Once Bolt is installed, you can use its built-in package task to manage packages on your machine, e.g. Apache, by running:
bolt task run package action=install name=apache2
(you can find more examples here)
But if you intend to use Puppet Forge Apache module with Bolt, you can start by installing the module, but this is a more advanced use case, as you'd probably would have to write a plan or manifest to actually use the module's full potential, and you'd still have to deal with some limitations.
As you're new to Puppet and Bolt, I'd recommend you start simple and also take this hand-on lab provided by PuppetLabs.
I hope that gets you going!
I'm working on a tool which manages WordPress instances using puppet. The flow is the following: the user adds the data of the new WordPress installation in the web interface and then that web interface is supposed to send a message to the puppet master to tell it to deploy it to the selected machine.
Currently the setup is done via a manifest file which contains the declaration of all WordPress instances, and that is applied manually via puppet apply on the puppet agent. This brings me to my 2 questions:
Are manifests the correct way of doing this? If so, is it possible to apply them from the puppet master to a specific node instead of going to the agent?
Is it possible to automatically have a puppet run triggered once the list of instances is altered?
To answer your first question, yes there's absolutely a way of doing this via a puppetmaster, what you have at the moment is a masterless setup which assumes you're distributing your configuration with some kind of version control (like git) or manual process. This is a totally legitimate way of doing things if you don't want a centralized master.
If you want to use a master, you'll need to drop your manifest in the $modulepath of your master (it varies depending on your version, you can find it using puppet config print modulepath on your master) and then point the puppet agent at the master.
If you want to go down the master route, I'd suggest following the puppet documentation which will help you get started.
The second question brings me on to a philosphical argument of 'is this really want you want to do?'
Puppet traditionally (in my opinion) is a declarative config management tool that is designed to make your systems look a certain way. You write code to determine 'this is how I want it to look' and Puppet will converge to make it look that way. What you're looking to do is more of an orchestration task (ie when X do Y). There are ways of doing this with Puppet like using mcollective (to trigger a puppet run) which is managed by a webhook, but I think there are better tools for the job.
I'd suggest looking at ansible, saltstack or Chef's knife tool to do deploys like this.
When using the Ansible provisioner, the delegate_to: ip_address can be used to execute actions on the machine that originally invoked ansible (the host) instead of the guest.
When using Puppet, what would be a similar equivelent?
Functions in a manifest are executed on the puppet master (if using agent). Resources are evaluated by the agent on the node. Note that this happens in stages, so functions are all called when the manifest is compiled and resources happen later after the compiled catalog is sent to the agent. Catalog caching can also prevent functions from being called on ever invocation of the puppet master.
Puppet implements a client / server paradigm (agent / master in Puppet jargon). I'm not sure whether that maps cleanly to Ansible's guest / host.
Nevertheless, Puppet DSL functions run on the master during catalog building. You can write custom DSL functions relatively easily, and you can run arbitrary commands (within the capabilities of the relevant user) via the built-in generate() function.
Additionally, if the master manages itself (which is common) then you can use exported resources to cause resources to be defined during building of any node's catalog that can later be collected and applied to the master.
Puppet does not provide any means, however, to cause code to run on the master as part of the process of the agent applying a catalog to a different node.
Is there a built-in way to mass deploy the Puppet agent on hundreds of nodes, in an unattended, automated way? (providing user/pass/cert.)
There is no built in way to do so. But, you can always use kickstart/pre-seed to deploy puppet agent as part of os provisioning and hand it to puppet to manage your hosts.
Or as an alternate you can write custom shell script to deploy puppet agent's on hundreds on machines, I personally use this method to manage puppet. For reference here is the script.
Also, you may be interested in project razor which automatically deploys puppet as part of bare-metal provisioning and hands it to puppet for configuration management.
Basically the only thing you need to do is to install the Puppet Agent on those machines. I assume that you don't install software packages manually for hundreds of nodes, right?
Once you installed the Agent, it will automatically find the Puppet Master (if puppet.yourdomain.com points to that host), sends certificate requests to the Master where you need to sign them. You can also use the autosign feature of Puppet.
Furthermore, Puppet Enterprise and The Foreman are bases on Puppet and they come along with additional provisioning features.
I suggest that you use the parallel SSH. There are plenty of flavours, I prefer clush, see https://github.com/cea-hpc/clustershell/wiki/clush
You need to create your /etc/clustershell/groups file with groups, e.g.:
all: node[1-2000]
Then you can install the puppet on all the nodes easily with something like this:
clush -bw #all yum -y install puppet
I would like to know how automated deployment to production works with puppet.
Do I need a puppet-slave on my production server? If thats the case, is that insecure and what rights do puppet get with that?
A use-case could be to get a package from a repository manager and then to deploy it to the production server. What are the main steps on this way with puppet?
Puppet can run in solo-mode where you apply a set of configurations in config file on the host in which you run it, as long as puppet (client/agent) is already installed there.
You can also run puppet in a client-server mode, where an agent runs on your production server and obtains configuration details from a puppet server (or puppet master)
If you run in client-server mode, how do you ensure security?
Well, in client-server mode, you pre-register a client/agent to a server you nominate and the exchange ssl certificates before any actions can be applied on that agent. Again, you would have to (on your pupper server or master) associate a set of actions or manifests to the production server running the agent. I suppose that provides sufficient security, assuming you already took care of standard OS security for both systems in the first instance.
Also, additional security can be provided by the puppet file server as suggested in the link suggested by bagheera. If you are even more paranoid than that, then you would need to consider using puppet librarian with a Puppetfile that is assembled and used at run time.
In either case, the bigger challenge for you is that the set of instructions (or manifests) applied have undergone testing (on a test or staging server) before being applied to a production system.
So, you need to be sure what you are doing when you start trying to apply puppet manifests to production servers. I would not recommend just downloading puppet modules and using them without a decent insight into what you are doing and a clear understanding of what each module you intend to use does.
Puppetlabs have great introduction documentation for using puppet, and that would be an excellent place to start learning more about puppet. A good book would also be useful.