[Puppet Users] Re: Puppet Proposal (what problems will puppet solve)

Paul Lathrop
Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:44:23 -0000

Zach,

Some thoughts inline:

On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Zach Buckholz
<zach.buckholz@apollogrp.edu> wrote:
>
> This may sound like a confusing / trick question, so please bare with me.
>
> What problem(s) will puppet solve? Why would I use it?

What problems do you want to solve?

Seriously, if you don''t have a solid answer to this question in your
head, I bet you will have trouble making Puppet work for you. What
frustrates you about doing things the old "ssh + loop over hosts"
ad-hoc shell scripting way? What fires do you spend most of your time
putting out? What things do you find yourself doing over and over and
over again? Answer these questions and you''ll be a good way towards
pitching your proposal.

> This is what I have come up with so far; (I wish the reductive labs site
had
> a wiki page for this)

Add one! That''s what wikis are all about!

>     What is the problem?
>         Unknown configurations
>         Environment is not dynamic
>         Messy
>         No central model
>         Hard to change
>         No consistency
>         Administration overhead
>         Reactive instead of proactive
>         Unorganized
>         Need scripts to work with linux and solaris
>         Hard to scale
>
> Can anyone add (non-technical explanations) to the above list?

I think you''ve covered enough ground here to make a solid argument, as
long as you remember to tie it all back to costs. Like this:

Unknown configurations: Whenever a machine has a problem, I spend XX%
of my time re-learning how that machine is set up before I can even
consider what is causing the problem. If the configuration were
consistent and self-documenting, it would free up XX hours of my time
($XX amount of money) to apply towards more important/revenue-driving
tasks.

That sort of thing gets managerial types fired up. Give them a dream
of an Operations team that is involved in producing revenue rather
than being a cost sink.

My .02

--Paul