Earlier in this series I had mentioned the Puppet Dashboard and how we were going to discuss that at a later time. Well guess what kids, its that time. Server Installation For those needing a little background on the puppet server in this example, we’re running on a CentOS 6.3 box with both the EPEL and Puppet repositories configured and active. All puppet modules of coarse are coming from the puppet repo itself for the latest and greatest bits.

So maybe writing modules isn’t something you want to hassle with. Ok, that’s cool. Puppetlabs has provided a place where you can leach off of others. In this article, I will talk about how to use PuppetForge (forge.puppetlabs.com) There is a good chance that if you thought of a module to write, someone may have already done it and can save you a LOT of work. Most of the modules will support the big three Linux flavors out there, but not all so your results may vary with each and every module.

Time to wrap a bow on one of my goals for 2012. 5x5K is officially complete with the finish of The Color Run – Des Moines. It was a bit chilly for the run but it was a blast. No times, just 27,000 of your friends running a 5K and getting colored power thrown on them. Quite the experience and I recommend it to just about everyone. Walkers, runners, kids. All are welcome!

We’re onto post 3 of our Puppet series. We have a master server, a client and we’ve made a connection. Its time to start getting into the real power of puppet and write our first module. Module Make Up So what makes up a module. They can be as simple as an init.pp file or as complex as having directories of files, templates and just about everything else under the sun there to help control your infrastructure.

If you’re reading this, there is a good chance that you do some sort of project work within your job. My blog doesn’t attact a lot of people outside of IT and the typical IT guy is working on project X, Y or Z and sometimes all 3 at the same time. If this isn’t you, I’ll save you some time and you can stop reading now. Ok, so you are working with your boss and he/she has assigned you a project.