WHAT IS PUPPET?

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Puppet is a Configuration Management tool that is used for deploying, configuring and managing servers. It performs the following functions:
  • Defining distinct configurations for each and every host, and continuously checking and confirming whether the required configuration is in place and is not altered (if altered Puppet will revert back to the required configuration) on the host.
  • Dynamic scaling-up and scaling-down of machines.
  • Providing control over all your configured machines, so a centralized (master-server or repo-based) change gets propagated to all, automatically.
Puppet uses a Master Slave architecture in which the Master and Slave communicate through a secure encrypted channel with the help of SSL

Configuration Management

System Administrators usually perform repetitive tasks such as installing servers, configuring those servers, etc. They can automate this task, by writing scripts, but it is a very hectic job when you are working on a large infrastructure.
To solve this problem, Configuration Management was introduced. Configuration Management is the practice of handling changes systematically so that a system maintains its integrity over time. Configuration Management (CM) ensures that the current design and build state of the system is known, good & trusted; and doesn’t rely on the tacit knowledge of the development team. It allows access to an accurate historical record of system state for project management and audit purposes. Configuration Management overcame the following challenges:
  • Figuring out which components to change when requirements change.
  • Redoing an implementation because the requirements have changed since the last implementation.
  • Reverting to a previous version of the component if you have replaced with a new but flawed version.
  • Replacing the wrong component because you couldn’t accurately determine which component needed replacing                                                         
 WHY WE NEED CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT TOOLS?
  • As a system administrator our job is a tedious one with repetitive tasks. As infrastructure grows these tedious tasks will take a big chunk of our time. This is where automation comes in to picture. Many people started using scripting languages like Shell scripting, Perl scripting, Python scripting, Ruby, PHP or even new language Go to automate repeated tasks. But our infrastructure growth did not stopped to just couple of 100 machines and growing exponentially with the advent of Cloud. This is where we require centralized configuration management tools like Puppet and Ansible. These tools allows us to configure any server or even multiple servers remotly and with ease. This is a kind of big brother to fabric module in Python. Below are some advantages.
  • Saves the time,
  • Repetitive task removal at a large scale.
  • Can work in homogeneous environments.
  • With puppet like tools we can build entire infrastructure without manual intervention in hours time which normally takes weeks or even months to set-up with huge financial inputs.

  • WHAT ARE DISADVANTAGES OF SCRIPTING?
    • A scripting language can be used to automate simple to medium tasks but if you want to build complete infrastructure we have to take help from configuration management tools which can talk to different parts of an infrastructure. As these tools implemented different modules to talk to different parts of IT infra structure.

  • WHY WE REQUIRE PUPPET?
    • Though cfengine is the first configuration tool it did not capture market. Puppet did that and most companies uses it now. But from my experience puppet is good for devops and Ansible is good for system administrators.

  • WHO DEVELOPED PUPPET?
    • Luke Kanies is a system admin who thought scripting is limiting factor to automate system admin tasks and developed puppet as an open source project.

  • WHOM PUPPET IS MEANT FOR?
    • Puppet is meant for all the people who like to automate infrastructure tasks(devops) or orchestration tasks(sysops).

  • WHERE WE CAN/CAN NOT USE PUPPET?
    • Ok, is puppet/Ansible only solution for system administration? The answer is no. There are still some tasks which we have to depend on manual system administration or scripting.

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