The document outlines seven habits of highly effective Puppet users: 1) think like a software developer by applying software engineering principles to Puppet code; 2) treat Puppet like code by using version control, documentation, code reviews, and linting; 3) stop and design infrastructure by separating concerns, using roles and profiles, and data separation; 4) test all infrastructure code using unit, integration, and acceptance tests; 5) implement continuous integration and deployment with automated testing across versions; 6) learn Ruby as Puppet is built with Ruby; and 7) get involved in the open source Puppet community.

1. Seven Habits of Highly Effective
Puppet Users
David Danzilio
@djdanzilio
1

2. $(whoami)
2

3. What’s talk this about?

4. A collection of observations of high
performing Puppet users

5. Habits?

8. What’s a habit?

9. “[A habit is] an acquired behavior
pattern regularly followed until it
has become almost involuntary”

10. Habits are hard

12. You don’t think about habits

13. Seven Habits
• Think like a software developer
• Treat Puppet like code
• Stop, drop, and design
• Test all the things
• Continuous integration and deployment
• Make nice with Ruby
• Get involved

14. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Habit #1
Think like a software developer
14Habit 1: Think like a software developer

15. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
You’re not a system administrator
anymore
15Habit 1: Think like a software developer

16. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
You’re a software developer
16Habit 1: Think like a software developer

18. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
System Administration
≠
Software Development
18Habit 1: Think like a software developer

19. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Why did we think this would be
easy?!
19Habit 1: Think like a software developer

20. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Puppet is easy because it’s a DSL
20Habit 1: Think like a software developer

21. FALSEFALSE

22. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
We just made it easy to write bad
code
22Habit 1: Think like a software developer

23. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
You can’t expect people to be good
at something they’ve never done
23Habit 1: Think like a software developer

24. I’m a doctor, not an engineer.I’m a doctor, not an engineer.24

25. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Software engineering is a mature
discipline
25Habit 1: Think like a software developer

26. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
This is particularly important in
Puppet 4
26Habit 1: Think like a software developer

27. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Habit #2
Treat Puppet like code
27Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

28. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Stop thinking of Puppet
as just configuration data
28Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

29. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Infrastructure as
CODE
29Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

30. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Infrastructure as
CODE
30Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

32. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Version Control
32Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

34. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Documentation
34Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

36. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
README
36Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

38. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Inline documentation
38Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

40. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Refactoring
40Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

41. ***

42. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Code Review
42Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

43. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Style
43Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

44. 44

45. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
puppet-lint
45Habit 2: Treat Puppet like code

46. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Habit #3
Stop, drop, and design
46Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

47. 47
**

48. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Software needs to be designed
48Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

49. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Separation of Concerns
49Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

50. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Package, File, Service
50Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

51. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Roles and Profiles
51Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

52. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Identify Interfaces
52Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

53. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
What information does your
module need?
53Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

54. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Where does that information
come from?
54Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

55. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Where does that information
need to go?
55Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

56. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Public and Private classes
56Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

57. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Data Separation
57Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

58. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Data in your Puppet
code is bad
58Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

59. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Hiera
59Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

60. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
params
60Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

61. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Module data
61Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

62. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Stability
62Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

63. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Identify a stable feature set
63Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

64. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Semantic Versioning
64Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

65. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Simplicity
65Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

66. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
UNIX Philosophy
66Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

67. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Focus on your module’s core
functionality
67Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

68. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Hooks
68Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

69. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
class jabberd (
...
$manage_package = true,
$manage_repository = false,
$manage_service = true,
...
) {
...
}
69Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

70. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Write modules as if they’re going to
be open sourced
70Habit 3: Stop, drop, and design

71. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Habit #4
Test all the things
71Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

73. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
The toolchain has improved
dramatically
73Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

74. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Testing has become relatively
inexpensive
74Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

75. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Your infrastructure is too important
to not test
75Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

77. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
How?
77Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

78. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
puppet-syntax
78Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

79. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
rspec-puppet
79Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

80. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
describe ‘myclass’ do
it { should compile.with_all_deps }
end
80Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

81. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
beaker
81Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

82. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users 82Habit 4: Create a culture of testing
kitchen-ci

83. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
serverspec
83Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

84. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
describe package('httpd') do
it { should be_installed }
end
describe service('httpd') do
it { should be_enabled }
it { should be_running }
end
describe port(80) do
it { should be_listening }
end
84Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

85. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Why test Puppet?
85Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

86. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Complexity
86Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

88. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Test first!
88Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

89. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Make your tests count
89Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

91. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
it do
should contain_file(‘/etc/ssh/sshd_config’).with({
‘ensure’ => ‘present’,
‘owner’ => ‘root’,
‘group’ => ‘root’,
‘mode’ => ‘0644’,
})
end
91Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

92. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
context ‘with port => 2222’ do
let(:params) {{ :port => ‘2222’ }}
it do
should
contain_file(‘/etc/ssh/sshd_config’).with_content(
%r{Port 2222}
)
end
end
92Habit 4: Create a culture of testing

93. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Habit #5
Continuous Integration and
Deployment
93Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

94. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Build a pipeline
94Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

96. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Automated testing
96Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

97. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Unit Tests
97Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

98. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Integration Tests
98Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

99. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Acceptance tests
99Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

100. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Test under real world conditions
100Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

102. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users

103. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Puppet versions
103Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

104. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Operating System versions
104Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

105. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Ruby versions
105Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

106. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Dependency versions
106Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

107. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Automated deployment
107Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

108. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
librarian-puppet, r10k,
MCollective, Capistrano
108Habit 5: Continuous integration and deployment

109. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Habit #6
Make nice with Ruby
109Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

111. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Puppet is Ruby
111Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

112. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Get over it
112Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

114. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Why?
114Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

115. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
rake
115Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

116. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
rspec
116Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

117. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
bundler
117Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

118. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
guard
118Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

119. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Custom Types, Providers, and Facts
119Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

120. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
If you want to do anything
advanced
120Habit 6: Make nice with Ruby

121. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Habit #7
Get involved
121Habit 7: Get involved

122. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Puppet is rapidly evolving
122Habit 7: Get involved

123. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Your experience is valuable
123Habit 7: Get involved

124. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Share your modules
124Habit 7: Get involved

125. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Speak at conferences
125Habit 7: Get involved

126. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Answer questions
126Habit 7: Get involved

127. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puppet Users
Blog about it
127Habit 7: Get involved

128. Questions?

129. Thank you!

130. David Danzilio
@djdanzilio
http://blog.danzilio.net

131. Image Credits
• http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/File:Homer-simpson-brain,1280x800,18857.jpg
• https://dcarchives.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/habit-change-1964-mcphee-priller.jpg
• http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3plfef
• http://www.quickmeme.com/Bad-Habit-Bruce
• http://www.mememaker.net/static/images/templates/747303.jpg
• http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/230191-wtf-is-this-shit
• http://programmerryangosling.tumblr.com/image/22790837971
• http://www.quickmeme.com/img/d3/d36ad81bae0a8d69cd91f81065d8b0a19d9dfc1b63753093992282d6aa8b35dd.jpg
• http://www.avatar3trailer.com/gangnam-style/gangnam_style_psy_05.jpg
• http://www.troll.me/images/pissed-off-obama/refactor-your-fucking-code.jpg
• http://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/05/30/ruby-foo/
• http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3twnp6
• http://smashingboxes.com/ideas/beginners-guide-to-test-driven-development-tdd
• http://www.pythian.com/blog/service-reliability-how-systems-administration-is-evolving-part-one/
• http://www.troll.me/2012/03/07/uncategorized/dont-worry-guys-i-got-programmer-cred/
• http://www.savthecoder.com/blog/saturday-meme-5-futurama-fry-tests-his-new-method
• http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uc80p/
• http://i.qkme.me/3tde6j.jpg
• http://i.qkme.me/3sekdw.jpg
• http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3sm9k1?id=229466593
• http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HUSSKWWg-0c/maxresdefault.jpg
• http://blog.15five.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Hypnosis_for_bad_habits_nyc.jpg
• http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/keep-calm-and-rtfm-27/