Puppet users - Aug 2010 - How to bootstrap a new puppet instance?

I''ve spent some time beginning to learn how puppet works, and one
seemingly rather daunting task I''m facing, is how to setup the initial
state of things.

What I''m specifically thinking about, is that I have machines running
that I want to get their current state pulled into puppet.  How do I
do that?  I have various flavors/versions of BSD systems and various
flavors/versions of *nix machines, and right now it''s seeming like I
have to tackle each one of each type, one by one, figuring out all the
myriad steps needed to build each one.

One thing I may be mis-understanding, however, is the base OS.  Should
I be expecting to have puppet start from a freshly installed OS, and
if so what level of configuration should be assumed?  I am expecting
puppet to be able to handle OS updates, but I haven''t yet run across
examples of that.

Does anybody know of any docs that describe what a significantly sized
existing organization might go through in order to adopt puppet?  Of
course I would expect this to ignore all the policy issues of
adoption, I''m looking for ideas on how to get started.

Thanks!

Mike

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On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Mike Peck <mpeck@yahoo-inc.com>
wrote:
> I''ve spent some time beginning to learn how puppet works, and one
> seemingly rather daunting task I''m facing, is how to setup the
initial
> state of things.
>
> What I''m specifically thinking about, is that I have machines
running
> that I want to get their current state pulled into puppet.  How do I
> do that?  I have various flavors/versions of BSD systems and various
> flavors/versions of *nix machines, and right now it''s seeming like
I
> have to tackle each one of each type, one by one, figuring out all the
> myriad steps needed to build each one.
Have you looked at ''ralsh'' ? Puppet normally takes manifests
and
applies them to achieve a given state, whereas ralsh allows you to
inspect the state of a given resource and spit out a puppet manifest.

There are a few little bugs with quoting, but it''s really quite useful
for this sort of thing.
>
> One thing I may be mis-understanding, however, is the base OS.  Should
> I be expecting to have puppet start from a freshly installed OS, and
> if so what level of configuration should be assumed?  I am expecting
> puppet to be able to handle OS updates, but I haven''t yet run
across
> examples of that.
>
> Does anybody know of any docs that describe what a significantly sized
> existing organization might go through in order to adopt puppet?  Of
> course I would expect this to ignore all the policy issues of
> adoption, I''m looking for ideas on how to get started.
Are you going to the SF Bay Area Large-Scale Production Engineering
meetup at Yahoo! tonight Mike? I notice someone with the last name
Peck is speaking...

I was planning to head along if you wanted to have a chat.

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On Aug 26, 2010, at 11:36 AM, Mike Peck wrote:
> I''ve spent some time beginning to learn how puppet works, and one
> seemingly rather daunting task I''m facing, is how to setup the
initial
> state of things.
>
> What I''m specifically thinking about, is that I have machines
running
> that I want to get their current state pulled into puppet.  How do I
> do that?  I have various flavors/versions of BSD systems and various
> flavors/versions of *nix machines, and right now it''s seeming like
I
> have to tackle each one of each type, one by one, figuring out all the
> myriad steps needed to build each one.
>
> One thing I may be mis-understanding, however, is the base OS.  Should
> I be expecting to have puppet start from a freshly installed OS, and
> if so what level of configuration should be assumed?  I am expecting
> puppet to be able to handle OS updates, but I haven''t yet run
across
> examples of that.
>
> Does anybody know of any docs that describe what a significantly sized
> existing organization might go through in order to adopt puppet?  Of
> course I would expect this to ignore all the policy issues of
> adoption, I''m looking for ideas on how to get started.

I''ve been engaged in more or less the same task.  One suggestion I  
have is that you don''t need to do it all up front.  You can get Puppet
installed and running on all of your nodes with trivial configuration  
for each.  You (or some delegates) can then update the configuration  
bit by bit, and refactor into modules as appropriate.



----------------------
Charles Yeomans
Senior Software Engineer
Dakim, Inc.
charles@dakim.com




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