<div dir="ltr">On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Jonathan Craig <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jcraig@opencsw.org" target="_blank">jcraig@opencsw.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">I'm interested in using puppet to begin managing our server<br>
infrastructure and looking to the community for insight. We currently<br>
have 450 servers (250 Solaris 10/11, 50 SUSE, 150 RedHat) to manage.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>I currently manage about 140 Solaris (mostly 10) boxes and 250 RHEL boxes with Puppet. </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
The questions I'm grappling with are:<br>
<br>
1) Puppet 2.7 vs 3.0<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>I'm currently on 2.7 but if you're starting fresh I'd go with 3.x. You'll have to upgrade to it anyway at some point. While the number is a big jump there's not actually that much of a big difference between the two. (i.e. It's not like you'll be running a bunch of experimental features)</div>
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2) Free vs Commercial<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>We use the free version with Foreman (<a href="http://theforeman.org/">http://theforeman.org/</a>) as the frontend web ui. Been working very well. </div><div>
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3) OpenCSW vs GEM install<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>I installed the puppet deps with opencsw packages but decided to manage the puppet and facter packages via 'gem' packages. This way I don't have to deal with opencsw package upgrade dependencies as much.</div>
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4) Should I run the master on Solaris or use RedHat with the<br>
expectation that it will be better supported within the Puppet<br>
community<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>I'd go with RHEL. You'll get better community support and I'm sure it's been more widely tested.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
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So, is anyone using the puppet/puppet3 CSW module; in production?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>Not sure what you mean by puppet CSW module. Do you mean pkgutil puppet package? Or the pkgutil puppet package provider? I don't use the opencsw puppet package but I'm sure it works fine. We do maintain our own local pkgutil repo and also use the pkgutil package provider. Works well.</div>
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How do you layout your directories<br>
? - Use CSW standards (/etc/opt/CSW, /var/opt/CSW, ...)<br>
? - Use standard puppet directories (/etc, /var, ...)<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>We use CSW standard dirs. /opt/csw and make some symlinks for puppet, facter, etc... into /usr/sbin, /usr/bin.</div><div>
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Are you managing Solaris 11 Boxes?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>Nope, moving off of solaris onto RHEL.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
? - What package providers do you use?<br>
? - pkgutil<br>
? - pkg<br>
? - sun<br>
?? - blastwave<br>
?? - sunfreeware<br>
? - any gotchas you know of<br>
<br>
How do you handle your internal packages (Business apps, admin scripts/tools)?<br>
? - package them with platform specific packaging and manage with<br>
standard providers<br>
? - use some other packaging and/or provider<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>We use a combination of packaging them into pkg packages or just pushing the scripts out.</div><div style><br></div><div style>If you're starting from scratch in the configuration management area and don't have windows boxes to manage I'd recommend you take a look at Ansible (<a href="http://ansible.cc/">http://ansible.cc/</a>) which is much simpler than puppet and which we're slowly moving towards (from puppet). It has good solaris support (still a few things missing for solaris) and very good RHEL support. Also worth a consideration before you choose is saltstack (<a href="https://github.com/saltstack/salt">https://github.com/saltstack/salt</a>). (I maintain the opencsw packages of it.... which I need to update to the latest version soon.)</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Anyway, good luck. Email directly if you want to talk more about any of this.</div><div style><br></div><div style>Romeo</div></div><br></div></div>