By Hitesh Jethva, Alibaba Cloud Tech Share Author
Puppet is an open source configuration management system that can be used for a wide variety of applications, from automation to update installation. It is written in Ruby and specially designed to manage the configuration of Unix and Windows like operating systems. You can easily deploy and manage a single server or thousands of physical and virtual servers from a central location.
Puppet can be used in a client-server architecture or standalone architecture. In a client-server architecture, the server is known as a master and client known as an agent. Puppet is available in two versions, Enterprise and Open source. Both of them support many Linux distributions and Windows. Puppet helps system administrator by cutting down on time spent on repetitive tasks, and by allowing them to focus on the projects that deliver greater business value.
• Puppet supports Idempotency which makes it easier to run the same set of configurations multiple times on the same machine.
• Eliminates the need for duplicated tasks for everyone solving the same problem.
• Every task is written in native code and can be shared easily.
• Allows us to make repeatable changes automatically.
• Adds extra functionality by adding extensions when required.
This guide will help you through the steps for installing and configuring open source Puppet in Client-Server architecture on Ubuntu 16.04 server, with Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances.
• A fresh Alibaba Cloud ECS instance for Puppet Master with Ubuntu 16.04 installed.
• A fresh Alibaba Cloud ECS instance for Puppet Agent with Ubuntu 16.04 installed.
• A static IP address 192.168.0.103 is configured on Puppet Master.
• A static IP address 192.168.0.104 is configured on Puppet Agent.
• Minimum 4 GB Memory and Dual-Core CPU is required for Puppet Master.
• Non-root user with sudo privileges is configured on both instances.
Before starting, you will need to configure /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname file on Server node and agent node, so they can able to communicate with each other.
On the Server node, open /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname file and make the following changes:
sudo nano /etc/hosts
Add the following line at the end of the file:
192.168.0.103 puppet-server
sudo nano /etc/hostname
Change the file as shown below:
puppet-server
Save and close the file when you are finished.
On the Agent node, open /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname file and make the following changes:
sudo nano /etc/hosts
Add the following line at the end of the file:
192.168.0.103 puppet-server
sudo nano /etc/hostname
Change the file as shown below:
puppet-agent
Save and close the file when you are finished.
Puppet server is not available in Ubuntu 16.04 default repository. So you will need to add Puppet Lab repository on both Master and Agent node.
On each node, run the following command to download and install Puppet repository:
wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-pc1-xenial.deb
sudo dpkg -i puppetlabs-release-pc1-xenial.deb
sudo apt-get update -yNext, install Puppet server package on Master node with the following command:
sudo apt-get install puppetserver -y
After installing the Puppet server, you will need to configure the memory allocation. You are recommended to customize the memory usage depends on how much memory your master node has. You can do this by editing /etc/default/puppetserver file:
sudo nano /etc/default/puppetserver
Change the lines as per your server capacity:
From
JAVA_ARGS="-Xms2g -Xmx2g -XX:MaxPermSize=256m"
To
JAVA_ARGS="-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
Save and close the file, then start Puppet server and enable it to start on boot time with the following command:
sudo systemctl start puppetserver
sudo systemctl enable puppetserverYou can check the status of the Puppet server using the following command:
sudo systemctl status puppetserver
If everything when fine you should see the following output:
● puppetserver.service - puppetserver Service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/puppetserver.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2017-10-28 18:47:26 IST; 12min ago
Process: 887 ExecStart=/opt/puppetlabs/server/apps/puppetserver/bin/puppetserver start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 963 (java)
CGroup: /system.slice/puppetserver.service
└─963 /usr/bin/java -Xms256m -Xmx256m -Djava.security.egd=/dev/urandom -XX:OnOutOfMemoryError=kill -9 %p -cp /opt/puppetlabs/server/Now, your Puppet server is up and running. It's time to install Puppet agent on Agent node.
Before installing Puppet agent, make sure you have installed Puppet Lab repository on Agent node. Next, install Puppet agent by just running the following command:
sudo apt-get install puppet-agent -y
Once Puppet agent is installed, you will need to edit the puppet configuration file and set puppet master information.
You can do this with the following command:
sudo nano /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/puppet.conf
Add the following lines:
[main]
certname = puppet-agent
server = puppet-server
environment = ITSave and close the file, then start Puppet agent service and enable it to start on boot time with the following command:
sudo systemctl start puppet
sudo systemctl enable puppetWhen the Puppet runs Agent node first time, it sends a certificate signing request to the Puppet server. In Client-Server architecture, Puppet master server must approve a certificate request for each Agent node to control the Agent node.
On Puppet server, list all unsigned certificate requests with the following command:
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet cert list
You should see the one request with your agent node's hostname:
"puppet-agent" (SHA256) 7C:28:E8:AF:09:23:55:19:AF:C1:EE:C3:66:F2:02:73:AD:7F:53:17:28:CE:B0:26:AE:C7:6C:67:16:05:6F:2E
Next, sign a certificate request using the following command:
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet cert sign puppet-agent
You should see the following output:
Signing Certificate Request for:
"puppet-agent" (SHA256) 7C:28:E8:AF:09:23:55:19:AF:C1:EE:C3:66:F2:02:73:AD:7F:53:17:28:CE:B0:26:AE:C7:6C:67:16:05:6F:2E
Notice: Signed certificate request for puppet-agent
Notice: Removing file Puppet::SSL::CertificateRequest puppet-agent at '/etc/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl/ca/requests/puppet-agent.pem'The Puppet Master server is now able to communicate and control the Agent node. If you want to sign certificate request of multiple nodes at once, then run the following command:
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet cert sign --all
Once the Puppet master has signed your Puppet Agent certificate, run the following command on Puppet Agent node to test it:
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet agent --test
If everything is done correctly, you should see the following output:
Info: Using configured environment 'production'
Info: Retrieving pluginfacts
Info: Retrieving plugin
Info: Caching catalog for puppet-agent
Info: Applying configuration version '1509200872'
Notice: Applied catalog in 0.09 secondsBoth Puppet Master and Agent node are now configured and are functional. It's time to verify Puppet.
To do so, create a manifest file to install Apache web server on Agent node. Manifest is a data file that contains client configurations. By default, manifest file is located at /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/manifests/ directory.
Before proceeding to create a manifest file, you will need to install the puppetlabs-apache module.
On the Puppet master node, run the following command to install the puppetlabs-apache module:
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet module install puppetlabs-apache
You should see the following output:
Notice: Preparing to install into /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules ...
Notice: Downloading from https://forgeapi.puppet.com ...
Notice: Installing -- do not interrupt ...
/etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules
└─┬ puppetlabs-apache (v2.3.0)
├── puppetlabs-concat (v4.1.0)
└── puppetlabs-stdlib (v4.20.0)Next, create a manifest file on the Puppet master with the following command:
sudo nano /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/manifests/site.pp
Add the following lines:
node 'puppet-agent' {
class { 'apache': } # use apache module
apache::vhost { 'localhost': # define vhost resource
port => '80',
docroot => '/var/www/html'
}
}The above configuration will install the Apache, configure a virtual host called localhost, listening on port 80, and with a document root /var/www/html on Agent node.
Now, on the Agent node, run the following command to retrieve all the configuration from manifest file:
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet agent --test
If everything is successful, you should see the following output:
Notice: /Stage[main]/Apache/Apache::Vhost[default]/File[15-default.conf symlink]/ensure: created
Info: /Stage[main]/Apache/Apache::Vhost[default]/File[15-default.conf symlink]: Scheduling refresh of Class[Apache::Service]
Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/Node[puppet-agent]/Apache::Vhost[localhost]/Concat[25-localhost.conf]/File[/etc/apache2/sites-available/25-localhost.conf]/ensure: defined content as '{md5}05a8b8c6772009021086814bdf8c985e'
Info: Concat[25-localhost.conf]: Scheduling refresh of Class[Apache::Service]
Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/Node[puppet-agent]/Apache::Vhost[localhost]/File[25-localhost.conf symlink]/ensure: created
Info: /Stage[main]/Main/Node[puppet-agent]/Apache::Vhost[localhost]/File[25-localhost.conf symlink]: Scheduling refresh of Class[Apache::Service]
Info: Class[Apache::Service]: Scheduling refresh of Service[httpd]
Notice: /Stage[main]/Apache::Service/Service[httpd]: Triggered 'refresh' from 1 events
Notice: Applied catalog in 53.11 secondsCongratulations! Apache is now installed and running on the Agent node.
With this tutorial, you can now easily install Puppet server on your production environment and manage your whole IT infrastructure easily. For more information on Puppet, you can refer the official Puppet documentation page. You can also find other tutorials on the Alibaba Cloud Getting Started channel.
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