Comments on: Puppet – Admin’s Best Friend http://kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/ Yet Another Admin's blog Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:58:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Phil http://kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/comment-page-1/#comment-230831 Phil Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:34:00 +0000 http://blog.kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/#comment-230831 Yes, there are bugs in Ruby that cause problems with puppet... http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#id57 Yes, there are bugs in Ruby that cause problems with puppet…

http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#id57

]]> By: Ask Bjørn Hansen http://kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/comment-page-1/#comment-230820 Ask Bjørn Hansen Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:25:00 +0000 http://blog.kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/#comment-230820 Hi Robby, Huh? Of course you can have memory leaks in a Ruby program - or something to the same effect. I've seen them too in our install of just a few dozen servers, but a restart of the process every few months seems to be plenty to keep it in check. The benefits by far outweigh the problems. I can't imagine managing more than one server without it now. One of the really neat things is that it makes it VASTLY easier to recreate a server when you're upgrading or replacing it. - ask Hi Robby,

Huh? Of course you can have memory leaks in a Ruby program – or something to the same effect.

I’ve seen them too in our install of just a few dozen servers, but a restart of the process every few months seems to be plenty to keep it in check. The benefits by far outweigh the problems. I can’t imagine managing more than one server without it now.

One of the really neat things is that it makes it VASTLY easier to recreate a server when you’re upgrading or replacing it.

– ask

]]> By: robbyt http://kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/comment-page-1/#comment-230682 robbyt Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://blog.kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/#comment-230682 re: Ilya Disclaimer: I haven't run puppet in a large install, just have done initial research... From my understanding on the inner-workings of puppet, it's written in 100% ruby. How can a scripting language have memory leaks? Your version of Ruby may leak memory, but puppet itself cannot. It's possible that the script may have errors or may not have proper error handling that causes it to be unstable, but i seriously doubt that you're experiencing memory leaks when using puppetd. Also, i'm not sure about what sort of file corruptions you're talking about- corrupt configuration files? re: Ilya

Disclaimer: I haven’t run puppet in a large install, just have done initial research…

From my understanding on the inner-workings of puppet, it’s written in 100% ruby. How can a scripting language have memory leaks? Your version of Ruby may leak memory, but puppet itself cannot. It’s possible that the script may have errors or may not have proper error handling that causes it to be unstable, but i seriously doubt that you’re experiencing memory leaks when using puppetd.

Also, i’m not sure about what sort of file corruptions you’re talking about- corrupt configuration files?

]]> By: Ilya Martynov http://kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/comment-page-1/#comment-226384 Ilya Martynov Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:58:00 +0000 http://blog.kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/#comment-226384 Puppet is nice in theory. In practice we found it is quite unstable for big installations (~100 servers): there are multiple memory leak issues in both puppetmaster and puppet client, stability issues where both die from time to time and even file corruptions. These problems are being slowly fixed with each new release but right now using puppet for big installations is source of constant problems and wastes a lot of time of our sysops team. Unfortunately you don't notice these problems until you get many servers to manage; on smaller installations it seems to work without problems (or at least they happen less often). In our case number of servers we manage increased slowly so we felt into the trap and now rely on puppet too much so it is quite late to change. If you start afresh I'd take a look on cfengine: it is not as flexible and nice as puppet but probably is more stable simply because it is more old. In the long run puppet will be probably ok too as it is being developed actively but right now it is in "beta" state. Puppet is nice in theory. In practice we found it is quite unstable for big installations (~100 servers): there are multiple memory leak issues in both puppetmaster and puppet client, stability issues where both die from time to time and even file corruptions. These problems are being slowly fixed with each new release but right now using puppet for big installations is source of constant problems and wastes a lot of time of our sysops team. Unfortunately you don’t notice these problems until you get many servers to manage; on smaller installations it seems to work without problems (or at least they happen less often). In our case number of servers we manage increased slowly so we felt into the trap and now rely on puppet too much so it is quite late to change.

If you start afresh I’d take a look on cfengine: it is not as flexible and nice as puppet but probably is more stable simply because it is more old. In the long run puppet will be probably ok too as it is being developed actively but right now it is in “beta” state.

]]> By: Scoundrel http://kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/comment-page-1/#comment-224637 Scoundrel Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:24:00 +0000 http://blog.kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/#comment-224637 2DM: No, it works on backbone interface for me. First thing I did was assigning puppet master machine a name like puppet.local and adding an appropriate record to /etc/hosts. Then I've specified this name in /etc/puppetmasterd.conf: <code> [puppetmasterd] reports = store,rrdgraph,tagmail,log certname = puppet.local </code> 2DM: No, it works on backbone interface for me. First thing I did was assigning puppet master machine a name like puppet.local and adding an appropriate record to /etc/hosts. Then I’ve specified this name in /etc/puppetmasterd.conf:

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[puppetmasterd]
reports = store,rrdgraph,tagmail,log
certname = puppet.local
]]> By: DM http://kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/comment-page-1/#comment-224341 DM Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:45:00 +0000 http://blog.kovyrin.net/2008/03/12/puppet-the-best-admins-friend/#comment-224341 To make it work together should I have external IP on client machine? Can't make it work with certificates. To make it work together should I have external IP on client machine? Can’t make it work with certificates.

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