Help with NTP module provided by puppetlabs

[Eddie Mashayev]

Hi All,

I have many servers spread in 3 different time zones USA (NY and San Francisco) and also in ISR. Have 3 NTP servers, one NTP server in each location.
https://forge.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs/ntp module is letting you to insert an array of NTP servers

class { '::ntp':
servers => [ 'ntp1.corp.com', 'ntp2.corp.com' ],
}

I can override this array but the problem is how to fit the correct NTP server to each server in the different location.
In other words, how can I modified the puppet module to fit server to the correct NTP Server by locations.

For example - I thought using the server prefix name to choose the right NTP server, for example if this server is located in NY so it prefix name is ny-{server name} so I can fit it to NY NTP server but it look like a headache to do it.

Do you have any idea how can it be done in most efficient way with the NTP module provided by puppetlabs.


Thanks,

EddieM

[Martin Alfke]

Hi Eddie,

Several solutions:

1. write wrapper module per data center:

class ny_ntp {
class { ‘::ntp’:
server => [‘ny_ntp.corp.com’],
}
}

class sf_ntp {
class { ‘::ntp’:
servers => [‘sf_ntp.corp.com’],
}
}

class isr_ntp {
class { ‘::ntp’:
servers => [‘isr_ntp.corp.com’],
}
}

use one of the the wrapper class within node classification

2. use hiera

provide a custom fact to identify location per server and put ntp::servers into the appropriate hiera data hierarchy.

Best,
Martin


>
>
> Thanks,
> EddieM
>
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[Eddie Mashayev]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the help. I used the second approach. 

1) I’ve created custom fact to identify the server location (I’m using the timezone fact) – Now I’m able to identify all my servers by location.
2) I’m not sure about the second part “put ntp::servers into the appropriate hiera data hierarchy” – I’m using Foreman and NOT Puppet enterprise if it matters. Can you elaborate more how to implement it right, maybe add some code if possible.

Thanks,

EddieM

[Martin Alfke]

On 10 Aug 2015, at 09:54, Eddie Mashayev <eddi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Martin,
>
> Thanks for the help. I used the second approach.
>
> 1) I’ve created custom fact to identify the server location (I’m using the timezone fact) – Now I’m able to identify all my servers by location.
> 2) I’m not sure about the second part “put ntp::servers into the appropriate hiera data hierarchy” – I’m using Foreman and NOT Puppet enterprise if it matters. Can you elaborate more how to implement it right, maybe add some code if possible.

Hiera is not related to Puppet Enterprise.
Hiera is a data backend for automatic parameter lookups.
see http://docs.puppetlabs.com/hiera/latest/

You need to create a hiera.yaml config file.
The config file may look like this:

:backends:
- yaml
:yaml:
:datadir: ‘/etc/puppet/data’
:hierachy:
- “nodes/#{::certname}”
- “location/#{::timezone}”
- global

In your hiera data directory you can provide yaml files for hierarchies (you don’t have to, but you can!)

/etc/puppet/data/
- nodes/foo.bar.domain.com.yaml # has host specific parameters
- location/CEST.yaml # has parameters for CEST timezone
- location/PDT.yaml # has parameters for PDT timezone systems
- global.yaml # has global parameters

Hiera parses the data hierarchy and uses the first match.
To allow dynamic data lookup the variable names from the module have to be prefixed with the class name where they are used.
Note: this only works with parameterised classes, not with normal variables inside a manifest.

With foreman you should also be able to create a group setting based on timezone fact (I don’t have access to foreman right now, so I can not verify).

Best,
Martin

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[Richard Gray]

On 10/08/15 20:12, Martin Alfke wrote:

You need to create a hiera.yaml config file.
The config file may look like this:

:backends:
  - yaml
:yaml:
  :datadir: ‘/etc/puppet/data’
:hierachy:
  - “nodes/#{::certname}”
  - “location/#{::timezone}”
  - global

Further to Martin's comment, you may be interested to know that the Foreman location and environment are available to Hiera, so you might prefer to use those rather than the timezone fact. E.g.

:backends:
  - yaml
:yaml:
  :datadir: ‘/etc/puppet/data’
:hierachy:
  - “nodes/#{::certname}”
  - “location/#{::location}”
  - global

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[Eddie Mashayev]

Thanks for the help :)

[Eddie Mashayev]

Hi Richard,

Just wondering, I do have now a locations configured on my Foreman (:locations_enabled: true), how can I access this data?
For example if I have a Facter variable named $location or $os_version so I can use it on mypuppet scripts. How can I use Foreman locations variable?
Hope I made myself clear :)

Thanks,

EddieM

[Richard Gray]

Hi,

If you have Foreman configured as an ENC, the location parameter will be available to Hiera as a fact. e.g. In the master section of puppet.conf, you'll have something like (node.rb comes from Foreman):

external_nodes = /etc/puppet/node.rb

Then in hiera.yaml you can reference the location fact with #{::location}. Parameters such as location are passed to puppet from an ENC through the hash structure described at https://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/external_nodes.html#enc-output-format

Cheers,
Richard

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