The software industry is changing and so are the related fields. Old paradigms are slowly giving way to new roles and shifting views on what the different professions should bring to the table. The DevOps trend pervades more and more workflows. Developers set up and maintain their own environments. Operations raise automation to new levels and translate whole infrastructures to code.
A steady stream of new technologies allows for ever-evolving, more efficient organizational principles. One of these is Puppet. Its fresh take on server configuration management caused a rapid adoption and distribution throughout the industry. In the few years of its existence, Puppet has managed to rally thousands of users who employ it in numerous contexts to achieve manifold results. While it is not the only configuration management system available, it is certainly the most widespread by now.
From its specialized language, to the system that makes it work, Puppet has innovated and rapidly conquered. Its extendible structure, paired with a large and helpful community, has made Puppet a powerhouse of easy configuration. The more well known a software is, the greater the chance that Puppet will deploy and configure it out of the box.
Puppet's own learning curve is not sharp, and the available documentation is not only extensive, but also of high quality. Nevertheless, even experienced programmers and administrators can face difficulties at some point. Advanced use may require the navigation of some intricacies that stem from Puppet's unique modeling approach.
This book aims to impart all the knowledge required to tap into not only the basics of Puppet, but also its core. The very ideas and principles of Puppet-based designs are explored and explained. Sophisticated tooling is presented to enable efficient and productive use. The reader is rapidly introduced to and familiarized with a whole range of Puppet-centric technology.
Chapter 1, Writing Your First Manifests, is an introduction to the core concepts of Puppet, including a syntax tutorial. You will learn to write and use Puppet manifests within a few pages.
Chapter 2, The Master and Its Agents, is a quick how-to guide to setting up all the required components for a distributed Puppet infrastructure. In this chapter, you will learn to create the master and an agent, and set up puppetserver.
Chapter 3, A Peek under the Hood Facts, Types, and Providers, covers a summary of the core components that give Puppet its flexibility, as well as its ease of use and extension. You will also be able to understand the principles of Puppet's function.
Chapter 4, Modularizing Manifests with Classes and Defined Types, helps you learn the most important structural elements of Puppet manifests. Find out how to use them for best results.
Chapter 5, Extending Your Puppet Infrastructure with Modules, takes you on a tour of downloadable extensions, with a guide to making your own. Extend Puppet to your specific needs.
Chapter 6, Leveraging the Full Toolset of the Language, teaches you to interpret and use language features beyond the basics.
Chapter 7, New Features from Puppet 4 helps you learn about the new Type system and data processing features. It also helps you to understand the deprecations and what to change to make use of the new features.
Chapter 8, Separating Data from Code Using Hiera, gives you an introduction to the powerful configuration data storage that comes with Puppet. In this chapter, you will learn to model your infrastructure naturally in a hierarchy.
To follow the examples, it is enough to use a computer with sufficient resources to run two or more virtual machine instances. The virtualization guests should have a connection to the internet and each other. The configuration examples are tailored to the Debian GNU/Linux operating system in version 7, code name "Wheezy".
This book assumes that the reader possesses no prior Puppet knowledge. Readers should have a sound technical background though. Experience with the GNU/Linux command line is required. Existing programming skills are recommended.
This book is also suitable for beginner or intermediate level Puppet users who wish to expand their knowledge of the software. It can serve as a guide for veteran users who wish to learn about the new features in the Puppet 4.x series of releases.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "With all your Hiera data in place, you can now include the demo class from your site.pp (or an equivalent) file indiscriminately."
A block of code is set as follows:
# role-dbms.yaml
demo::atoms:
self:
address: localhost
master:
address: master.example.net
port: 60119When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
# role-dbms.yaml demo::atoms: self: address: localhost master: address: master.example.net port: 60119
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
root@puppetmaster # hiera -c /etc/puppetlabs/code/hiera.yaml demo::atoms
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "The ability to enumerate classes for each node to include is what Puppet's External Node Classifiers (ENCs) had originally been conceived for."
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