Puppet Essentials

Prerequisites

Before attending this course, students must have:

• Experience in using the command line
• Some familiarity with Linux (or similar) concepts
• Experience with a text editor such as vi
• A basic understanding of services and host file entries

Learning Outcomes

Delegates will learn how to:

• Install and configure Puppet Enterprise
• Install and configure Puppet Agent
• Describe the key components of Puppet including Hiera and Facter
• Write classes comprising desired resources for a node
• Test their Puppet configurations
• Use Puppet to configure multiple web servers

Course Outline

Introduction to Configuration Management

• Why do we need Configuration Management?
• What are the components of Configuration Management?
• What are the benefits of Configuration Management?
• What is the Configuration Management life cycle?
• What are the common tools for Configuration Management?

Puppet Overview

• Puppet Enterprise stack and features
• Model based approach
• Composable configurations
• Lifecycle of a puppet run
• Puppet component roles (master / agent)
• Master / agent architecture

Puppet Components

• Describing and maintaining state
• Infrastructure as code
• Idempotency
• Resources
• Live management
• Facter, Hiera and Puppet forge

Managing assets with Git

• Source Control
• Version Control
• Centralised and Distributed Version Control Systems
• GIT as a DVCS
• GIT Basics
• Choosing a DVCS
• The SSH Protocol

Resources and Providers

• Puppet resources
• Resource declarations
• Declarative Modelling Language
• Resource Abstraction Layer
• Providers

Modules and Classes

• Puppet Classes
• Puppet Modules
• Module Directory Structure
• Namespaces and Auto-loading
• Defining and Declaring Classes
• Testing Classes

Using Puppet Without a Master

• Puppet Usage Patterns
• Masterless Puppet - in short
• Benefits of going 'Masterless'
• What would you have to do?
• Problems with going 'Masterless'

Deploying Your Code to the Puppet Master

• A Git to Puppet Workflow
• Git and Puppet Master
• Single or Multiple Repositories?
• Managing Multiple Masters

Testing Puppet

• Syntax checking
• The Smoke test
• Simulating change with Puppet
• Virtualisation
• Module testing frameworks
• Unit testing modules
• Test Driven Development - TDD

Using Puppet Forge

• Puppet Forge
• Using the Puppet Forge online
• The puppet module tool - PMT
• Search for modules
• Install a module from Puppet Forge
• Uninstall a module
• Publish a module to the Puppet Forge

Classification

• What is Classification?
• Node Definitions: site.pp
• Regular Expressions in Node Definitions: site.pp
• Console Classification
• Console Classification - Node Definitions
• Console Classification - Node Groups

Environments

• What are Environments?
• Environment Directory Structure
• Configure Puppet Master to use Directory Environments
• Global Settings for Configuring Environments
• Assign Nodes to their environments
• Preconfigured Node Groups
• Environment-based Workflow

Live management

• What is Live Management?
• Inspect node Resources
• Control Puppet

ERB templates

• Use cases for ERB Templates
• Using templates
• Using Puppet variables
• Defining Puppet variables
• ERB Conditions

Resources in depth

• Resource type origins
• Resource type categories
• Meta resource types
• Resource type documentation
• Metaparameters
• title and namevar

Resource relationships

• Resource relationships
• Dependency management
• Implicit dependencies

DSL - Domain Specific Language

• Using Puppet variables (facts)
• Defining local variables
• Using variables
• Variable scope
• Strings and arrays
• Conditional expressions: if, selectors, case, unless
• Statements and functions

Parametrised types

• Parameterised Classes and Inheritance
• Defining a Parameterised Class
• Declaring a Parameterised Class
• Assigning Parameters in the PE Console
• Class Inheritance - base class declaration
• Class Inheritance - sub class declaration
• Class Inheritance - Best Practice

Defined resource types

• Defining and Declaring a Defined Type
• Module Directory Structure

Hiera

• What is Hiera?
• Why use Hiera?
• Configuring Hiera
• Yaml file locations
• Sample data files
• Automatic data bindings
• Explicit Hiera lookup
• Testing Hiera

PuppetDB

• What is PuppetDB?
• What is stored in PuppetDB?
• How is PuppetDB accessed?
• Example queries
• Dashboards
• PuppetDBquery module

Troubleshooting

• Troubleshooting Puppet classes and Modules
• Troubleshooting Puppet Installations

Puppet Best Practices

• Using Modules
• Version Control
• Naming Conventions
• Style
• Classes Vs Defined Types
• Roles and Profiles

Other Configuration Management Tools

• Managing AWS services with the AWS CLI
• Configuring Servers using Kickstart
• Provisioning Infrastructure with Foreman and Puppet
• Preparing operating systems using Cobbler