Remote Network Device management...

[Gavin Williams]

Afternoon all

We are starting to look at using Puppet Network device support in anger, and one of the potential issues that has been raised is around cross-site access...

Currently, we have one Puppet master server, which is hosted in location C.
This server is able to access and manage the appropriate network devices in location C.

However there are other devices in locations A and B which we want to be able to manage through Puppet. However some potential concerns have been raised around allowing the puppet master server blanket access to locations A & B...

Is it possible therefore to run the network devices in effectively a 'proxy' mode. That is, we create/nominate a suitable node in locations A and B which would be able to manage network devices in their respective locations, and these nodes then talk back to the Puppet master.

Does this sound sensible?

Any other considerations/ideas as to how the above can achieve?

Cheers in advance for any responses.

Regards
Gavin

[Peter Brown]

I have no idea how you are achieving the network device configuration but a setting up a VPN between the master and locations b and c seems like the best way to do it.

That would give you centralised management and security as well.

I would suggest using some kind of ssl wrapped vpn like openvpn or ipsec or something like that.

I did find this module on puppet forge for managing openvpn

https://forge.puppetlabs.com/luxflux/openvpn

 

Hope that helps.

Pete.

Cheers in advance for any responses.

Regards

Gavin

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[fatmcgav]

Peter

Cheers for the response.

Network device management is being achieved using Puppet's new 'Network Device' support as part of 3.0...

Site to site connectivity isn't an issue, as we've got a 100Mbps MPLS link between all 3... However it was more about security and the practicality of allowing the Puppet master effectively unlimited access to all sites...

Cheers
Gavin

[Jason Edgecombe]

What about running a satellite puppet master at each site?

[Gavin Williams]

That sounds ideal... Might make sense with general node performance etc aswell...

Any examples on how to do that?

Cheers
Gavin

[Jason Edgecombe]

Here is a document for running multiple puppet masters:
http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/scaling_multiple_masters.html

Have you confirmed that the network device management only runs from the
puppet master? As I understand most of the puppet
actions are performed by the puppet agent, which runs on all machines,
including the pupper master. The puppet master compiles manifests,
handles certificates, serves files and receives reports. The rest
usually happens on the agent side.

Jason

On 12/21/2012 10:20 AM, Gavin Williams wrote:
> That sounds ideal... Might make sense with general node performance etc
> aswell...
>
> Any examples on how to do that?
>
> Cheers
> Gavin
>
> On Friday, 21 December 2012 15:17:47 UTC, Jason Edgecombe wrote:
>> What about running a satellite puppet master at each site?
>>
>> On 12/21/2012 03:57 AM, fatmcgav wrote:
>>> Peter
>>>
>>> Cheers for the response.
>>>
>>> Network device management is being achieved using Puppet's new 'Network
>>> Device' support as part of 3.0...
>>>
>>> Site to site connectivity isn't an issue, as we've got a 100Mbps MPLS
>> link
>>> between all 3... However it was more about security and the practicality
>> of
>>> allowing the Puppet master effectively unlimited access to all sites...
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Gavin
>>>
>>>

>>> On 21 December 2012 01:07, Peter Brown <rendh...@gmail.com <javascript:>>
>> wrote:
>>>> On 21 December 2012 02:40, Gavin Williams <fatm...@gmail.com<javascript:>>

>>>>> To post to this group, send email to puppet...@googlegroups.com<javascript:>.

>>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

>>>>> puppet-users...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>.

>>>>> For more options, visit this group at
>>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en.
>>>>>
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[Gavin Williams]

Jason

Cheers for that link.

The '*puppet device*' command certainly exists on all puppet nodes.
What I'm not sure of is whether there is anything else that it needs to
function?

Otherwise, it would be just as easy to nominate a node within each location
that has got puppet installed, and use them as the network device
management nodes...
One thing I can think of is what happens to the 'network device'
configuration if that node fails... Could I re-create everything on another
node? Think the SSL certs are stored locally on the node, etc...

Cheers
Gavin

[Jason Edgecombe]

You're welcome.

I'm still a puppet n00b, so I don't have an answer to your all of your
questions. I'm using my experience with other tools and patterns to give
guidance. It's on my to-do list to migrate from cfengine to puppet.

I recognize the pattern that you want. You have a role or task that must
be done, and it doesn't matter who does it, but it should only done by
one node at a time. I have similar needs and I take the easy way out by
assigning a static host to do this. I've read about others who use
Apache's zookeeper or the noah tool as a global lock to ensure that the
task is done by one and only one worker. I plan to look into this once I
have more puppet infrastructure in place.

Sincerely,
Jason