newb here

[rmarque]

I just became the Linux Admin for a large company's development team. There are about 6 servers (ubuntu on HP) and roughly 35 people who all have ubuntu workstations and laptops (dual boot). I have heard of puppet and have tried to wrap my head around what it might be good for in the environment. I do have to keep these environments pretty strict as it is development of major software. I also have a couple of new servers coming in that I will need to image as close to the other servers as possible.

So, in laymans terms...would puppet be good for deploying/imaging new servers/workstation/laptops in the same strict OS/pkgs as everybody else?

Would it be good at deploying new pckgs/patches to the OS across all of them?

Any and all comments welcome.

Yes, I am a newb. ;-)

Thanks!

[Jason Viloria]

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My experience is with Redhat/RPM but I can see that what I use applies
to ubuntu/debian as well so here it is. [Specially the latest versions
of cobbler/puppet]
I have successfully been using cobbler and puppet for provisioning and
management.

1. Cobbler for pxe/dhcp/dns management.

I use cobbler to store all the distros that I can possibly be asked to
install. Also I use it to mirror all external repositories so
everything is local. As a result, a base systems install takes about
10 minutes from pxe to bash prompt.

2. Puppet for configuration management - all machines have a puppet
profile , after cobbler is done installing the server, puppet kicks in
pulling the configuration for the particular machine being installed
and it goes its way installing the packages/software.


For server, I package everything and keep them in our custom repo. As
a result re-installation is a snap and automated with puppet.

For desktop machines, the users $HOME are stored in an nfs share. This
provides a side effect that a desktop can blow up and I can restore
everything to a new machine just by booting it up with cobbler and
letting puppet apply the configs.


Puppet might be hard at the start but there are great tutorials out
there. Start with running puppet locally by using it to configure your
desktop before you attempt to set it up in a server/client setting.

I hope this helps
/Jason

[Denmat]

Hi,

Yes puppet can used to ensure your nodes are at a certain 'state'. The state being the same configuration and package level. You can use puppet to change the state across your nodes. 

If I was starting out in your position I would look at 'foreman'. It can build out systems and maintain the state of your nodes (uses puppet). However, puppet by itself will meet your initial requirements.

With puppet you need to have an OS already installed before you can use it. With foreman you can provision the node with the OS as well. 

http://theforeman.org

Cheers

Den

--

[jcbollinger]

On May 2, 5:22 pm, rmarque <rob.j.marq...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just became the Linux Admin for a large company's development team. There
> are about 6 servers (ubuntu on HP) and roughly 35 people who all have
> ubuntu workstations and laptops (dual boot). I have heard of puppet and
> have tried to wrap my head around what it might be good for in the
> environment. I do have to keep these environments pretty strict as it is
> development of major software. I also have a couple of new servers coming
> in that I will need to image as close to the other servers as possible.
>
> So, in laymans terms...would puppet be good for deploying/imaging new
> servers/workstation/laptops in the same strict OS/pkgs as everybody else?

Puppet will not handle the initial imaging of a new machine. The
machine has to be running with at least a minimal configuration
(including the Puppet agent) before Puppet can do anything with it.

Puppet could be used to bring systems up from a minimal image to a
standard operational configuration. That might be useful vs. trying
to do everything in an image, because it's a lot easier to modify your
Puppet configuration than to create a new image. Moreover, Puppet can
adapt to the system it is configuring, such as by inserting its
hostname into configuration files, or by ensuring a host- or role-
specific set of software is installed.

On the other hand, it's more complicated to set up an initial all-
encompassing Puppet configuration than to just make a filesystem
image. That one-time initial effort buys you a lot of flexibility,
and I think it's worth the effort, but you shouldn't ignore the up-
front cost.

> Would it be good at deploying new pckgs/patches to the OS across all of
> them?

Yes, Puppet is great for that -- particularly packages.


John