A few getting started questions

[Adaryl Wakefield]

I'm trying to get started with Puppet and have a few questions:

1. Is this the right place to ask questions or should I use the message boards instead?

2. Is there a well organized "learn puppet" book? The one I have is kind of a mess. I tried the docs on the Puppet website and I get lost jumping around with the links. It would be nice if it where in a PDF. Does that exist anywhere?

3. I have a three node cluster. I want to use Puppet to install Hortonworks Hadoop. The question I have is, can the Puppet Master also be one of the nodes managed by Puppet? That may sound weird. Basically, since I only have three machines, The Puppet master and the Hadoop name node are going to have to share a machine. Is that possible?

B.

[Dan White]

Inline responses

> On Jun 19, 2015, at 12:27 PM, Adaryl Wakefield <adaryl.l....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm trying to get started with Puppet and have a few questions:
> 1. Is this the right place to ask questions or should I use the message boards instead?

This is one of many places to ask.
There is the Ask Puppet web page, IRC channels, local Puppet user groups

> 2. Is there a well organized "learn puppet" book? The one I have is kind of a mess. I tried the docs on the Puppet website and I get lost jumping around with the links. It would be nice if it where in a PDF. Does that exist anywhere?

Start with http://learn.puppetlabs.com IMHO

> 3. I have a three node cluster. I want to use Puppet to install Hortonworks Hadoop. The question I have is, can the Puppet Master also be one of the nodes managed by Puppet? That may sound weird. Basically, since I only have three machines, The Puppet master and the Hadoop name node are going to have to share a machine. Is that possible?

Yes. Whether it is PRACTICAL is a completely different question.

>
> B.

[Adaryl Wakefield]

My name node has 1TB of HD space and 30 gig of ram. Puppet isn't something that's constantly running is it? Like it's not constantly pinging the agent nodes?

B.

[jcbollinger]

On Friday, June 19, 2015 at 12:26:42 PM UTC-5, Adaryl Wakefield wrote:

My name node has 1TB of HD space and 30 gig of ram. Puppet isn't something that's constantly running is it? Like it's not constantly pinging the agent nodes?

In a master / agent configuration, the master operates strictly as a server -- it responds to requests from the agents, and does not otherwise communicate with them.  It is typical for the agents to issue catalog requests to the master periodically, at intervals of 30 minutes by default.  The agent is able to run as a local daemon to schedule this itself, or it can be scheduled via an external tool, such as 'cron'.

There was at one point a mechanism by which the master could be used to send a message to agents to induce them to immediately issue a fresh catalog request.  That required an opt-in on the agent side, and I am uncertain whether it is still present in Puppet 4.  PuppetLabs tends now to recommend MCollective for direct remote control.

John