Preface

Puppet is a configuration management tool that allows you to automate all your IT configurations, giving you control over what you do with each Puppet agent in a network, and when and how you do it. In this age of digital delivery and ubiquitous internet presence, it's becoming increasingly important to implement scalable and portable solutions, not only in terms of software but also the system that runs it.

This book aims to impart knowledge required to tap into not only the basics of Puppet, but also its core. The very basic ideas and principles of Puppet-based designs are explored and explained in this book. A sophisticated tool is presented to enable efficient and productive use.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Writing Your First Manifests, explains Puppet declarative configuration management based on resources and how to implement them.

Chapter 2, Puppet Server and Agents, covers installation and configuration of Puppet Server, and how to comment agents to the server.

Chapter 3, A Peek into the Ruby Part of Puppet - Facts, Types, and Providers, explains the underlying functions of Facter and its facts, types, and providers in Puppet.

Chapter 4, Combining Resources in Classes and Defined Types, covers self-defined resources that allow you to simplify a repetitive code.

Chapter 5, Combining Classes, Configuration Files, and Extensions into Modules, explains the concepts of Puppet environments and node classification.

Chapter 6, The Puppet Beginners Advanced Parts, covers the Puppet features that offer readability, flexibility, and improvements such as EPP templates, virtual and exported resources, and resource defaults.

Chapter 7, New Features from Puppet 4 and 5, explains the concept of Puppet environments and node classification.

Chapter 8, Separation of Code and Data with Hiera, covers a Puppet way of separating code and data, so data can be managed.

Chapter 9, Puppet Roles and Profiles, provides a workflow that allows separate upgrades of upstream modules and local Puppet implementations.

What you need for this book

You need Debian 8+ or Ubuntu 14+, and physical/virtual x86.

Who this book is for

This book is meant for an experienced IT professionals and new Puppet users. This book will provide you with all you need to know to go from installation to advanced automation. Get a rapid introduction to the essential topics and learn how to build best practices for advanced automation with Puppet.

Conventions

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: "The file resource type will return mtime and ctime."

A block of code is set as follows:

node 'agent' {
     $packages = [ 'apache2', 'libapache2-mod-php5', 'libapache2-mod-passenger', ]
     package { $packages:
       ensure => 'installed',
       before => Service['apache2'],
      }
     service { 'apache2':
       ensure => 'running',
       enable => true,
     }
   }

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

service { 'puppet': enable => false }
cron { 'puppet-agent-run':
user    => 'root',
  command =>
    'puppet agent --no-daemonize --onetime --
     logdest=syslog',
   minute => fqdn_rand(60),
   hour   => absent,
} 

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

puppet:///modules/ntp/ntp.conf
puppet:///modules/my_app/opt/scripts/find_my_app.sh

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: "If you are looking for a module that will enhance your agents through additional resource types and providers, look for the Types tab on the module details page. "

Note

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Note

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.