A presentation of PSICK, a Puppet control repo and a module to speedup the setup of a smart and extensible infrastructure.

1. Puppet Systems Infrastructure Construction Kit
Alessandro Franceschi
@alvagante

2. Puppet masters' dilemmas

3. Make sense of the whole: Language,
resources, classes, modules, facts,
variables, templates, hiera...
Decide how to classify nodes
Manage configurations variety
Find and integrate existing modules:
Try, integrate, use, wrap.
Adapt, fight, fork.
Or write from them scratch.
Design Hiera hierarchies.
What's data.
How's data.
Who uses data.
Puppet masters' dilemmas

4. 10 years of public Puppet ramblings

5. 2008 Example(42) Puppet infrastructures
First set of example42 modules
2010 Puppi
2010 Example42 NextGen modules
2012 Puppet Playground
2014 Tiny Puppet
2016 Reusable control-repo
2017 PSICK module and control-repo
10 years of public
Puppet ramblings

6. A state of the (current) art
Puppet control-repo
github.com/example42/psick
An Infrastructure
Puppet module
github.com/example42/puppet-psick
Requires Puppet 4.6 or later
Usable (cherry picking single
elements) by:
- Puppet Beginners who can cope
with just [YAML] data over DSL
- Experienced Sysadmins who know
how to configure their files
- Puppet Experts interested in
radically alternative approaches to
Puppet dilemmas

7. A control-repo with psick powers

8. Support for Linux, Windows [and...]
Toolset for the Puppet developer
Multi OS Puppet installer
CI with GitLab, Travis, Jenkins
Sample hiera datasets
Docker image building
Testing local code on containers
Testing local code on Vagrant VMs
Multiple configurable Vagrant env
Multi OS Vagrant boxes
Automatic control-repo docs
Noop and no-noop management
Control-repo spec tests
Control-repo integration tests
Quick Puppet Enterprise test env
Fabric integration [...]
A control-repo with
psick powers
github.com/example42/psick

9. An Infrastructure puppet module

10. What is an Infrastructure module?!
Install:
puppet module install example42/psick
Usage:
include psick
Nothing is done by default.
Everything is configured via Hiera.
It has 3 opt-in functions:
- classification
- base profiles for common use cases
- tp profiles for [any] application
An Infrastructure
puppet module
github.com/example42/puppet-psick

11. Classification with psick module

12. Phased classification:
[firstrun] -> pre -> base -> profiles
Hiera deep merge lookup to OS dependent hashes
with the classes to include in each phase
psick::enable_firstrun: true #Def: false
psick::firstrun::linux_classes:
aws_sdk: psick::aws::sdk
psick::firstrun::windows_classes:
hostname: psick::hostname
psick::pre::linux_classes:
repo: psick::repo
users: psick::users
psick::base::linux_classes:
mail: psick::postfix::tp
ssh: psick::openssh
sudo: psick::sudo
network: network
psick::pre::windows_classes:
hosts: psick::hosts::resource
psick::base::windows_classes:
features: psick::windows::features
registry: psick::windows::registry
Classification with psick

13. psick profiles

14. Ready for use and cherry pick profiles to manage common
system and applications configurations.
Alternative to dedicated modules
psick::profiles::linux_classes:
time: psick::time
psick::time::servers:
- pool.ntp.org
A partial list of base profiles for common settings:
- psick::hosts - Manage /etc/hosts
- psick::motd - Manage /etc/motd and /etc/issue
- psick::nfs - Manage NFS client and server
- psick::sudo - Manage sudo configuration
- psick::sysctl - Manage sysctl settings
- psick::firewall - Manage firewalling
- psick::openssh - tp profile and keygen define
- psick::hardening - Manage system hardening
- psick::network - Manage networking
- psick::puppet - Manage Puppet components
- psick::users - Manage users
- psick::time - Manage time and timezones
A list of application specific profiles:
- psick::ansible - Manage Ansible installation
- psick::aws - Manage AWS client tools and VPC setup
- psick::bolt - Manage Bolt installation
- psick::docker - Docker installation and build tools
- psick::foreman - Foreman installation
- psick::git - Git installation and configuration
- psick::gitlab - GitLab installation and config
- psick::mariadb - Manage Mariadb
- psick::mysql - Manage Mysql
- psick::mongo - Manage Mongo
- psick::php - Manage php and modules
- psick::oracle - Manage Oracle prereq and setup
- psick::sensu - Manage Sensu
psick profiles

15. Tiny Puppet and tp profiles

16. Standard set of profiles to manage
applications with Tiny Puppet (tp).
psick::profiles::linux_classes:
web: psick::apache::tp
psick::apache::tp::resources_hash:
tp::conf:
apache::openkills.info.conf:
base_dir: conf
template: psick/apache/vh.conf.erb
options_hash:
ServerName: openskills.info
ServerAlias:
- openskills.info
AddDefaultCharset: ISO-8859-1
apache::deny_git.conf:
base_dir: conf
source: puppet:///modules/psick/
apache/deny_git.conf
tp::dir:
apache::openskills.info:
vcsrepo: git
source: git@git:alvagante/osk.git
path: /var/www/html/openskills.info
Tiny Puppet and tp profiles

17. demo

18. Start to play around
git clone https://github.com/example42/psick
cd psick
bin/puppet_install.sh # To install latest Puppet agent
bin/puppet_setup.sh # Installs required gems and runs r10k
cd vagrant/environment/<env>/
vagrant status [vm]
vagrant up [vm]
vi ../../../hieradata/* ...
vagrant provision [vm]
Work on a new control-repo based on psick
git clone https://github.com/example42/psick
cd psick
./psick create
cd /path/to/yournew_control-repop
git status
vi ...
git add [...]
demo

19. Explore the control-repo
# The first manifest parsed by Puppet server
manifests/site.pp
# r10k Puppetfile and directory for public modules
Puppetfile modules/
# Sample Hiera configuration file and data directory
hiera.yaml hieradata/
# Directory with different Vagrant environments
vagrant/
# Tools for various tasks (used in dev and CI)
bin/
# CI integration
.gitlab-ci.yml Jenkinsfile .travis.yml
# Control repo spec tests
spec/ Gemfile Rakefile
# Local profiles
site/
demo

20. Test local code with Vagrant
• Multiple Vagrant environments
ls -l vagrant/environments/
• Each one customisable via config.yaml
cd vagrant/environments/ostest
vi config.yaml
• Start the Vagrant VM you want
host $ cd vagrant/environments/ostest
host $ vagrant status
host $ vagrant up centos7.ostest.psick.io
• Test your code and data
host $ vi ../../../hieradata/nodes/
centos7.ostest.psick.io.yaml
host $ vagrant ssh centos7.ostest.psick.io
vm $ sudo su -
vm # /vagrant_puppet/bin/papply.sh
demo

21. Where to customise
• Psick control-repo is just the starting
point for a greenfield modern Puppet
setup
• Define a way to set your nodes
defining variables (the ones used in
hiera.yaml)
• Decide how to manage classification
• For each element to configure choose:
1 - Use a public module (add it to
Puppetfile)
2 - Use a psick profile
3 - Write a custom profile (add to
Puppetfile or directly in site/
profile/)
• Review hiera.yaml logic and
customise data in hieradata/
• Customise your Vagrant environments
• Customise CI pipelines

22. PSICK the control-repo
github.com/example42/psick
The psick Puppet module
github.com/example42/puppet-psick
forge.puppet.com/example42/psick
Interested?
Weekly Puppet Tips
example42.com/blog
Graphics: tatlin.net