This document discusses Puppet moving from Ruby to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for its server components. Some of the benefits of running Puppet Server on the JVM include better performance, scalability, and removing the Global Interpreter Lock that affects Ruby. Benchmarking showed Puppet Server running on the JVM was 2-3 times faster than the pure Ruby implementation. The document encourages community involvement to provide feedback and contribute to the Puppet Server and Trapperkeeper projects on GitHub.

1. Puppet master to
Puppet Server
or, How I learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the JVM
Kevin Corcoran
@KevinOfCorc

4. why?

6. ▪ difficult to change
▪ difficult to understand
▪ still really valuable
▪ performance, scale
▫ MRI + GIL
▪ Passenger
▫ lack of coordination between processes
WE’VE ALL GOT PROBLEMS

7. JVM ...

9. CHALLENGES
▪ puppet apply
▫ a first-class citizen
▪ JVM on master only
▪ no parallel implementations
▪ continue to use Ruby

11. It has to “just work”™.
It has to be fast.
(trademark pending)

12. ▪ lifecycle
▪ state
management
▪ configuration
▪ logging
▪ packaging
▪ code
modularity,
reuse

13. WHAT’S A TRAPPERKEEPER?
▪ open-source Clojure application
framework
▪ “Service”
▪ Service API vs. implementation
▪ foundation for server-side apps
▫ PuppetDB
▫ Puppet Server
▫ Classifier / Node Manager
▫ RBAC

17. ▪ Yes, people are actually using
it.
▪ Yes, in production.
▪ latest version: 1.0.3
▪ part of PE 3.7.x
▪ “it works like a champ” - Trevor
Vaughan
STATUS

19. LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND BENCHMARKS
▪ simulated HTTP traffic
via Gatling
▪ Puppet 3.7.0
▪ ~1000 resources
▪ master host:
▫ CentOS 6
▫ 4-core Xeon 3.6GHz
▫ 8 GB RAM

22. LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND BENCHMARKS
▪ ~2x faster @
1000 nodes
▪ ~3x faster @
2000 nodes
▪ performance
barely affected
by 2x as many
agents

23. Puppet <3 JRuby

24. DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!

25. COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
▪ Don’t fear the reader!
▪ There’s still plenty of Ruby to
be written.
▪ User feedback is invaluable!
▪ Github: dev docs
▪ Jira: SERVER project
▪ Tomorrow: Contributor Summit

26. Kevin Corcoran
@KevinOfCorc
kevin.corcoran@puppetlabs.com
on github:
puppetlabs/puppet-server
puppetlabs/trapperkeeeper
questions?