Puppet users - Jul 2012 - Remote site puppet infrastructure

I''m trying to figure out if there is a common/working setup that people
are
using to host puppet in remote sites.

At first our setup was that we have several puppetmasters (PM) in site A 
and a couple in our smaller site B.  In site A we are also hosting Foreman 
and our mysql DB for storeconfigs.  site A and B are connected via a WAN 
that is fairly slow.

With this setup the issue I ran into was a lot of puppet agent runs in site 
B would timeout.  They connect to their PM in site B just fine, but then 
the site B PM needs to connect to the storeconfigs DB in site A.  This 
connection usually takes too long.  So we end up with about 50% error rate 
in site B while having a 0% error rate in site A.

I''ve tried to address this by using async_storeconfigs which seemed to
help
a lot but ran into https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/12140 which was a 
dealbreaker.

Something else I''ve tried is just having agents in site B use the PMs
in
site A (so no more PM in site B).  This helps a lot, but we still get 
errors.  The 50% error rate drops down to about 1% error rate.  It seems 
the traffic from agent to PM is less then the traffic from PM to DB?  Not 
only did the error rate go down, but config retrievals sped up.

One thing I''m wondering is if there is a way to setup a mysql
storeconfigs
DB in site B to reduce latency.  Either only nodes in site B will use 
storeconfigs in site B or maybe site A and B are ''clustered''
somehow over
WAN?  I''m not very strong with mysql skills though so I''m not
sure what all
can be done with it to address the issues I''m facing ...

So I was wondering does anyone else manage remote sites?  Is there a way to 
do it while still maintaining a central storeconfigs DB and
''dashboard/ENC''
(don''t want to have ''login here to view these nodes, login
there to view
these other nodes)?

Thanks for all comments!
Jake

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On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 4:20 PM, Jake - USPS
<jacob.m.mccann@usps.gov>wrote:
> I''m trying to figure out if there is a common/working setup that
people
> are using to host puppet in remote sites.
>
> At first our setup was that we have several puppetmasters (PM) in site A
> and a couple in our smaller site B.  In site A we are also hosting Foreman
> and our mysql DB for storeconfigs.  site A and B are connected via a WAN
> that is fairly slow.
>
> With this setup the issue I ran into was a lot of puppet agent runs in
> site B would timeout.  They connect to their PM in site B just fine, but
> then the site B PM needs to connect to the storeconfigs DB in site A.  This
> connection usually takes too long.  So we end up with about 50% error rate
> in site B while having a 0% error rate in site A.
>
> I''ve tried to address this by using async_storeconfigs which
seemed to
> help a lot but ran into https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/12140 which
> was a dealbreaker.
>
> Something else I''ve tried is just having agents in site B use the
PMs in
> site A (so no more PM in site B).  This helps a lot, but we still get
> errors.  The 50% error rate drops down to about 1% error rate.  It seems
> the traffic from agent to PM is less then the traffic from PM to DB?  Not
> only did the error rate go down, but config retrievals sped up.
>
> One thing I''m wondering is if there is a way to setup a mysql
storeconfigs
> DB in site B to reduce latency.  Either only nodes in site B will use
> storeconfigs in site B or maybe site A and B are
''clustered'' somehow over
> WAN?  I''m not very strong with mysql skills though so I''m
not sure what all
> can be done with it to address the issues I''m facing ...
>
> So I was wondering does anyone else manage remote sites?  Is there a way
> to do it while still maintaining a central storeconfigs DB and
> ''dashboard/ENC'' (don''t want to have
''login here to view these nodes, login
> there to view these other nodes)?
>
> Thanks for all comments!
>
I think thats one of the known shortcoming of storeconfigs, and one of the
main reasons I''ve never used them personally in the past.
What is your usage case fore storeconfigs? I always found ways to avoid
using it (e.g. by storing the data i need somewhere else).

I had (job N-1) about 15 sites (each with PM''s) working really nice,
but
without storeconfigs..

Ohad
> Jake
>
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Ohad,

Thanks very much for the reply.  Functionally we do not use storeconfigs 
(no exported resources).  We just like having all of the facts available to 
query/search against (CMDBish).  I guess since we use Foreman this means we 
really don''t need to use storeconfigs to do what we want, but can
instead
push facts from our PMs to our Foreman DB which I see now after reading 
some more from the Foreman FAQ.

Thanks!
Jake

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