Configuration management is the oft-misunderstood (and possibly black) art of managing your IT environment, infrastructure, and costs. Done well it can reduce operational errors and outages, simplify your environment, and help maintain the sanity of your IT staff. Puppet is part of the bright future of configuration management for heterogeneous Unix systems. It combines automation, a powerful abstraction language, and uses a client-server model that can scale to suit enterprise-size environments. Puppet is written in Ruby and authored by recovering system administrator-turned-developer Luke Kanies. This session explains why configuration management is important, the benefits configuration management will deliver, and how all of this can be achieved using Puppet. The session also explains emerging best practices in configuration management and addresses: * What is configuration management? Or why am I here? * Benefits, risks, and challenges: build fire resistant infrastructure rather than fight fires * Best practice: how do we do this configuration management magic right? * Where does Puppet fit in and why should management pay for its implementation? * Why using Puppet will save you money and help staff retention (although is unlikely to stop world hunger) * Real world configuration management using Puppet: code, examples, explanations, and using Puppet in anger * Measuring the results and pocketing the returns * Where to from here: some ideas about the future (may include wild-arse guesses)

1. Using Puppet
Real World Configuration Management
James Turnbull
http://puppet.reductivelabs.com

2. Questions…
Feel free to ask questions

3. Where do I come from?

4. Configuration
Management?

5. Management Speak
• Management model for:
 Infrastructure
 Applications
 Data
• Documentation of attributes and operations
• Organization of attributes and operations
• Validation, audit, and verification

6. Where does it fit in?

7. Do you need it?
Large number of like hosts
… that are somehow never alike

8. Do you need it?
High level of failed change
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22676988@N06/2426527413/

9. Do you need it?
When your hosts look like this...

10. Just for enterprises?
“Mum, what’s an enterprise?”

11. What are the benefits?
Reproducibility
Accuracy
Homogeneity
Decision Support
Saves Money!

12. all this gets you ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibuch/115409282/

13. Risks & Challenges
Tools != Process
Information is power
Accurate information is all-powerful

14. Best practice
Life cycle
Categorize, modularize, standardize
Control
Test, Test, and Test again

15. Who sells this?
Proprietary software vendors
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ca_newsom/2199106278/

16. So what’s wrong?
Archaic Monolithic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/draggin/15223525/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesotron/511509780/

17. Who gives this away?
Free Open Source Software
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tigr/26362667/

18. Introducing puppet
Andrew
Luke
Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lkanies/2659592110/

19. Would you buy software from those guys?

20. The key pieces
Abstracts configuration as resources
Allows relationships
Idempotent

21. How is it managed?
Declarative not imperative language
WHAT not HOW

22. Puppet….
package { “ruby”:
ensure => latest,
}

23. Not Puppet…
# yum install ruby # up2date ruby
# apt-get install ruby # fink install ruby
# ports install ruby # pkg_add ruby
# emerge ruby # pkg-get ruby
# rpm -Uvh ruby-1.8.6.i386.rpm # rug install ruby
# gem install ruby # pkgadd ruby

24. A whole service...
yum install bind
vim /etc/named.conf
service start named
package { bind: ensure => installed }
file { “/etc/named.conf”:
source => “puppet://server/srv/bind/named.conf”
}
service { named: ensure => running }

25. Puppet
Client-Server model
SSL communication
Unix-centric
Highly extensible
Written in Ruby

26. What’s new?
New support for Zenoss
Native support for Augeas
Enhanced conditionals
Automated documentation of modules
Native support for SELinux
Microsoft Windows support on the way!

27. What can be managed?
30 package types
Users & groups
Services
Nagios
Support for Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Solaris, OS X,
Gentoo, SuSE, *BSD, AIX, HP-UX and others.

28. In the clouds...
Spacewalk Capistrano
Augeas Amazon (E2, S3, SQS)
Func Cloud tools on the
way...
Cobbler
Kickstart
Preseed

29. Classes & definitions
class postfix {
… collection of resources …
}
define postfix_files {
... Repeatable application …
}

30. Modules
Collections of classes, definitions and resources
Portable and self-contained
Several collections of modules available online
for common configurations:
http://reductivelabs.com/PuppetModules

31. Nodes
node “webserver.domain.com” {
include webserver
}
node “db1”, “db2”, “db3” {
include database
}
Nodes also support inheritance

32. Let’s all get related…
You can apply resources before other
resources
After other resources
In response to other resources
Or even subscribe to resource changes

33. Language Attributes
Arrays
[ “red”, “green”, “blue” ]
Variables
$variable = value
Conditionals
If/else statements
Case statement
Selectors

34. Templates
Allows you to create template configuration
files
For file-based configurations without types
Uses Ruby ERB
Allows population of templates with Puppet
configuration, variables and facts

35. Facter
System inventory tool
Returns facts about hosts
Detects changes and updates information
Facts can be used in Puppet configurations
You can create custom facts
NEW! Windows fact support!

36. facts
hostname => absinthe
ipaddress => 10.0.0.15
kernel => Linux

37. Measuring success
Availability
Reduction in incidents
Rate of failed change
Build time and speed to market
Compliance to SOE, policy & standards

38. Do more with less?
Doesn’t mean head count cuts
Doesn’t mean budget cuts
More time to work on the projects that count
Better use of time means happier people

39. The future ….

40. The future is ...
REST APIs
Better performance
Better memory use
Automated plug-in system
Automated module system

41. The future is ...
Workflow systems
Service Level Management
Compliance & Governance systems
Inventory

42. Puppetshow

43. iClassify

44. PuppetView

45. Questions?
Puppet
http://puppet.reductivelabs.com
Pulling Strings With Puppet
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590599780
© All images from Flickr and copyright to their owners