This document provides an overview of how to get started with Puppet to automate infrastructure from scratch. It defines the key components of the infrastructure including virtualization with Vagrant, version control with Git, configuration management with Puppet, test and deployment automation with Jenkins, log aggregation with ELK, and monitoring with Sensu. It describes modeling the infrastructure with roles, profiles, classes and modules in Puppet and using Hiera for data abstraction. It also demonstrates setting up the infrastructure with links to running services.

1. Getting it right from the start with Puppet
Modern Infrastructure
From Scratch

2. Senior DevOps Engineer at Ecetera
simon.kp@ecetera.com.au
eskp almost everywhere else
Who am I

3. Overview
● Define, model and provision new infrastructure
● Establish an efficient development workflow
● Get familiar with some of the Puppet concepts

4. Why automate infrastructure?
● Consistently Repeatable and Portable
● Efficient
● Captured Effort
● Executable/Live Self-Documentation

5. Define Modern Infrastructure
● Infrastructure Automation (VirtualBox+Vagrant)
● Version Control (Git+Gitlab)
● Configuration Management (Puppet)
● Test + Deployment Automation (Jenkins+r10k)
● Centralised Log Aggregation (ELK stack)
● Monitoring (Sensu)

6. Infrastructure Model

7. The code
Two repositories:
● Vagrant repo https://github.com/Ecetera/puppet-vagrant
● Control repo https://github.com/Ecetera/puppet-control

8. Puppet Roles & Profiles
Resources > Classes > Modules > Profiles > Role > Node
Allow the business to manage how the infrastructure
looks without defining what it is
Data is abstracted by Hiera

9. Roles definition
# site/role/manifests/init.pp
class role::git {
include profile::jenkins
include profile::rabbit
include profile::mco::client
}
...

10. Profiles definition
# site/profile/manifests/init.pp
class profile::jenkins {
class { '::jenkins': }
jenkins::job { 'puppet-control': }
create_resources(jenkins::credentials, hiera('jenkins_credentials'))
}
...

11. Nodeless Classification
# site.pp
node default {
hiera_include(‘role’)
}

12. Hiera overview
---
# /etc/puppet/hiera.yaml
:yaml:
:datadir: “/etc/puppet/environments/%{::environment}/data”
:hierarchy:
- “%{::hostname}”

13. Hiera overview
---
# data/puppet.yaml
role:
- role::puppetserver
apache::default_vhost: false
...

14. Don’t write modules unless you absolutely have to.
Modules

15. Look for modules
● Puppet Labs approved and supported
● Lots of downloads
● No weird dependencies
● Documentation
● Source is on Github

16. Module Deployment
r10k - manages modules defined in Puppetfile
Deploys Puppet’s dynamic directory environments
based on puppet-control repo’s git branches
Does not resolve modules dependencies

17. Puppetfile
mod ‘puppetlabs/ntp’, ‘3.2.1’
mod ‘rabbitmq’,
:git => https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppetlabs-rabbitmq.git,
:commit => '15e2421048a3495e60482837910441a1248bf6f0'
...

18. Demonstration
http://puppet.eskp.net:5000 Puppetboard view of Puppet
infrastructure
http://control.eskp.net:9090 Jenkins
http://log.eskp.net Kibana dashboard for centralised logs access
http://mon.eskp.net:3000 Uchiwa dashboard overview of Sensu

19. Todo
● Write infrastructure tests
● Address scale
● Provision with puppetlabs-aws module
● Upgrade to Puppet 4

20. Questions?
simon.kp@ecetera.com.au (eskp)
“Modern Infrastructure From Scratch”