Pulling Strings with Puppet: Configuration Management Made Easy [Paperback]

James Turnbull (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 11, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1590599780 | ISBN-13: 978-1590599785 | Edition: 1

Competent system administrators know their success hinges upon being able to perform often tedious tasks with rigor and punctuality. Such metrics are often achieved only by instituting a considerable degree of automation, something that has become even more crucial as IT environments continue to scale both in terms of size and complexity. One of the most powerful system administration tools to be released is Puppet, a solution capable of automating nearly every aspect of a system administrator’s job, from user management, to software installation, to even configuring server services such as FTP and LDAP.

Pulling Strings with Puppet: Configuration Management Made Easy is the first book to introduce the powerful Puppet system administration tool. Author James Turnbull will guide you through Puppet’s key features, showing you how to install and configure the software, create automated Puppet tasks, known as recipes, and even create reporting solutions and extend Puppet further to your own needs. A bonus chapter is included covering the Facter library, which makes it a breeze to automate the retrieval of server configuration details such as IP and MAC addresses.

What you’ll learn

• Properly install and configure Puppet in order to begin immediately maximizing its capabilities
• Create reporting solutions to more easily monitor automated outcomes
• Extend Puppet to perform tasks that are capable of suiting your organization’s specific needs
• Use Facter to query server operating systems for key data such as IP addresses, server names, and MAC addresses

Who this book is for

Ruby developers and system administrators.

Table of Contents

1. Introducing Puppet
2. Installing and Running Puppet
3. Speaking Puppet
4. Using Puppet
5. Reporting on Puppet
6. Advanced Puppet
7. Extending Puppet

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Turnbull is the author of five technical books about open source software and a longtime member of the open source community. James authored the first and second books about Puppet, and works for Puppet Labs, running client services. James speaks regularly at conferences including OSCON, Linux.conf.au, FOSDEM, OpenSourceBridge, DevOpsDays and a number of others. He is a past president of Linux Australia, has run Linux.conf.au and serves on the program committee of Linux.conf.au and OSCON. James is Australian but currently lives in Portland, Oregon. His interests include cooking, wine, political theory, photojournalism, philosophy, and most recently the Portland Timbers association football team.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (February 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599780
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599785
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.4 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #380,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Turnbull works for Puppet Labs as VP of Technical Operations
managing the customer-facing business units including Services,
Sales Engineering, Support, Operations, Education and Community Management.

James has previously for the National Australia Bank as the manager of
the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and as an Executive
Manager of IT Security at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the CIO of a medical research
foundation doing Web-based clinical trials, managing the architecture
group of an outsourcing company and in a number of IT roles in gaming,
telecommunications and government.

He is an experienced infrastructure architect with a background in
Linux/Unix, AS/400, Windows, and storage systems. He has been involved
in security consulting, infrastructure security design, SLA and service
definition and has an abiding interest in security metrics and measurement.

James is involved in the Free and Open Source Software community as a
developer and contributor. He was the Treasurer, member of the papers
committee, and coordinated the mini-conference program at linux.conf.au
2008 in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a member of Linux Australia,
including serving on the Executive Council in 2008 and President in 2010.

In his spare time his interests include cooking, wine, political theory,
photojournalism, philosophy, poetry, and cats.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book, but more would be better... December 18, 2008

By P. Boin

Format:Kindle Edition

I liked what was in this book. It's a good overview of what puppet can do, with examples.

The one thing that's missing, and it's driving me crazy is that it doesn't have an index! That's maddening for a reference book. In a perfect world, I'd like to see some more best practices and some suggestions for how to transition running machines on to puppet.

Overall, a 'buy', but bring your own sticky notes to mark important pages...

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent First Edition...But... June 18, 2010

By Anthony M. Parrillo

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you are completely new to Puppet, you should definitely buy this book. It does a good job of walking through the basics of automating your data center. I would have liked to see some more in-depth examples, but the topics covered were fleshed out enough that I could figure it out on my own.

I have a major complaint about this edition, however: when it comes to technical books, published code should ALWAYS be tested. It should be taken as absolute fact that the code published in a reference manual will function correctly and do what the author claims it will do. That's not the case here. For example:

On pg. 116, the author creates a resource of type

"apache::apache_files"

But in the definition for "apache:apache_files" ON THE VERY NEXT PAGE it reads:

define appache::apache_files ...

with two 'p's. It's clear that this code could never have been tested, because it wouldn't work!

But the author does demonstrate a thorough understanding of the subject matter, and I will probably buy "Pro Puppet" when it is released. But I sincerely hope the code is tested (or the editing is improved).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT 'physical' resource for Puppet February 10, 2010

By Gary Larizza

Format:Paperback

This book walks you through everything Puppet-related - from setting up the puppetmaster, to creating your first class, to scaling and tuning puppet. I've got tons of sticky notes in my copy that I refer to at least a couple of times a month (now 8 months into a district-wide puppet rollout). Yes, there's not an index - but the sheer content/info in the book makes it a must-buy for anyone who wants to begin with Puppet.

Puppet is now well into version 0.25.4, but the information in this book is still pertinent in many ways. I would love to see an updated version, though!