Provisioning with Puppet
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vasta/4463786284/

$ whoami
Joe Ray
Senior Systems Developer
Future Publishing
@jr261

Overview
• Why you should use provisioners
• What is Puppet?
• How do you use it?
• Using Puppet with Vagrant
• Using Puppet in production

Why use provisioners?
• Reproducible setup
• Write less documentation
• Same config for multiple platforms
• Scale your setup
• Easily move from development to
production
• Distribute amongst team
• SSH access not necessary
• Use associated tools

What is Puppet?
• Configuration management tool
• Platform-agnostic (supports Linux, Free/OpenBSD,
OSX, Windows, Solaris)
• Description of systems' configuration using
manifests
• Idempotent

Resources
• Building blocks of configuration:
• packages
• services
• files
• users / groups

Resources
package { 'nginx':
ensure => present,
}
user { 'joe':
ensure => present,
shell => '/bin/zsh',
home => '/home/joe',
}

Modules
• Self-contained, reusable sets of resources
• Typical pattern:
• Install package
• Manage service
• Provide configuration helpers (defined
types)
• http://forge.puppetlabs.com

Modules
class nginx($workers=1, $ensure=present) {
package { nginx:
ensure => $ensure,
}
service { nginx:
ensure => $ensure,
subscribe => File["/etc/nginx/nginx.conf"],
require => File["/etc/nginx/nginx.conf"],
}
file { "/etc/nginx/nginx.conf":
ensure => $ensure,
content => template("nginx/nginx.conf.erb"),
require => Package[nginx],
}
}

Templates
server {
! listen 80;
! server_name <%= domain %>;
! root <%= root %>;
! access_log /var/log/nginx/<%= domain %>.access.log;
! keepalive_timeout 5;
! location / {
index index.html index.htm;
! }
}

Using modules
include nginx
class { 'nginx':
'workers' => 5,
}
nginx::site { 'www.mywebsite.com':
'config' => 'www.mywebsite.com',
'root' => '/data/www.mywebsite.com',
}

Using with
Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet|
puppet.manifests_path = "manifests"
puppet.manifest_file = "my_manifest.pp"
end
end

Facts
• How Puppet knows about your system
$ facter
architecture => amd64
domain => vagrantup.com
facterversion => 1.6.17
fqdn => debian6.vagrantup.com
hardwareisa => unknown
hardwaremodel => x86_64
hostname => debian6
id => vagrant
interfaces => eth0,lo
ipaddress => 10.0.2.15
etc...

Using with
Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
config.vm.provision :puppet, :facts =>
{"vagrant" => "vagrant"} do |puppet|
puppet.manifests_path = "manifests"
puppet.manifest_file = "my_manifest.pp"
end
end

Using with
server {
! listen 80;
! server_name <%= domain %>;
! root <%= root %>;
<% if @vagrant %>
satisfy any;
deny all;
allow 192.168.33.1;
allow 10.0.2.2;
<% end %>
! access_log /var/log/nginx/<%= domain %>.access.log;
! keepalive_timeout 5;
! location / {
index index.html index.htm;
! }
}

Using Puppet in production
manifests / git / svn
Puppetmaster
modules / files or whatever
REST over HTTPS Reports
Client Client Client

What next?
• Example Puppet project at: github.com/
josno/puppet-example
• Read the docs: docs.puppetlabs.com