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

Julian Simpson
Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:04:33 -0000

Steve Traugott (http://www.infrastructures.org/) compares the problem
to building cars by hand, vs the production line.  It''s a nice
metaphor to use when you''re trying to demonstrate what a significant
change it can be.

We still do stuff by hand in IT even though you can demonstrate that
the error rate of doing it is far too high.  I think IT workers end up
far too often like the poor bloke on the clock in Metropolis. :)

J.


2009/2/3 Bjørn Dyre Dyresen <bjorn@dyresen.net>:
>
>
> 2009/2/2 Zach Buckholz <zach.buckholz@apollogrp.edu>
>>
>> This may sound like a confusing / trick question, so please bare with
me.
>>
>> What problem(s) will puppet solve? Why would I use it?
>>
>> I am trying to pitch the use of puppet in our environment and need to
>> follow a formal proposal model. Which means I need to start with a
problem
>> to solve or situation to improve.
>>
>> The concept of what puppet will do needs to be explained to
non-technical
>> business leaders.
>>
>> This is what I have come up with so far; (I wish the reductive labs
site
>> had a wiki page for this)
>>
>>     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?
>>
>>     Zach
>> This message is private and confidential. If you have received it in
>> error, please notify the sender and remove it from your system.
>>
>
>
>
> If you are consistent in your use of puppet you can use puppet as a
> documentation resource.
> Need to know how a particular server is configured? Look at the puppetcode!
>
> With puppet you can move servers with ease!
> you write generic classes or modules. Need to move a particular service?
> Just include it somewhere else!
>
> For consistency it''s really easy to apply the same configuration
to a lot of
> hosts.  Need to add a host? Well, just add it to the host group, and puppet
> takes care of it!
>
> As for administration overhead. Puppet will give you less work to do! How?
> You just make a puppet manifest/module/class/whatever suites you that takes
> care of a certain thing. You know it works! You don''t have to
remember how.
> Next time, just apply it to a host! And Done!
>
> If you need scripts to work on multiple platforms, Puppet does this really
> well. Just add eg a case statement selecting what to apply based on
> operating system.
>
> Puppet scales well. Having server being puppetmaster set up with
> nginx/mongrel/puppet we can restart puppet 100 nodes at the same time
having
> no troubles at all. The server being a dual quadcore with 16 gb of ram is
> serving approx 200 nodes and is not sweating a bit. Could easly serve the
> double.
>
>
>
> >
>



--
Julian Simpson
Software Build and Deployment