Stuart, Yes, many of us use ENCs, though it seems to be mostly limited to larger shops; these days many people are moving in the direction of hiera instead. I've been using various ENCs for the past ~4 years.
There are relatively few good choices for already-written ENCs. (well, if you just want a simple script, you can write it yourself; most of the "ENCs" that are available provide a web interface for configuring everything). The most popular options that I know of are Puppet Dashboard (aka Console in Puppet Enterprise) and Foreman. The current version of Dashboard (IMHO) has some serious issues, though PL is actively working on them and I'm told that big improvements can be expected. Foreman is good, solid software but does a LOT in terms of provisioning, DNS and DHCP control, etc. as well as a lot of internal logic about setting variables and classes, etc. so I feel that it's a bit much if all you want is a plain-and-simple ENC. I'm in the process of polishing up my company's internal ENC, and plan on releasing it on github. It's a python/Django app that supports multiple inheritance and overrides, class and parameter exclusions, and has full support for parameterized classes and deep data structures. That being said, I've also written ENCs in the past that were quite simple - type in a hostname, check off some boxes for classes and groups, and you're done. As to samples - unfortunately, no, I don't... but you just need some script that prints valid YAML according to the spec. Without knowing more about how you want it to work, I can't provide much of an example. "My current question is how do you use the ENC definitions within the classes?" Well, most of the ENCs I've used in the past (Puppet Dashboard included) just return a list of classes to apply to the node, and a list of parameters. The parameters are passed to puppet as top-scope variables. So your ENC defines a parameter called, say, httpd_version, and somewhere in your httpd class, you use $::httpd_version. Of course then you really need to follow the params.pp pattern to declare a default value, and validate what the ENC passes in. This pattern really sucks. Lately, especially since puppet3 came out, I've been using an ENC that supports parameterized classes. So I don't do anything special in my classes (in fact much of what I use are modules from the Forge), and I just tell the enc what classes I want, and the parameters that I want passed in to them. This allows me to use many of the forge modules (especially the puppetlabs ones) straight from my ENC. I'd be happy to provide a bit more advice if you have more specific questions. -Jason On 12/03/2013 06:50 PM, Stuart Cracraft wrote: > Hi, > > I'd like to use ENC:: > > http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/external_nodes.html > > to keep hardwired customizations away from our classes and other files > as much as possible > particularly for the node name, but potentially as esoteric as a > machine configuration, file > permission, service name, etc - to keep the classes as flexible and > general as possible. > > My questions: > > + have you done the above? > + what were your learnings > + do you have sample puppet_node_classifier's you can share? > + how to use the definitions from ENC via the pm's puppet.conf's > linkage to the ENC > > [main] > : > node_terminus = exec > external_nodes = /usr/local/bin/puppet_node_classifier > : > > My current question is how do you use the ENC definitions within the > classes? > > Is this adequately described in-depth in the yet-to-be-published > Puppet book? > > Stuart > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Puppet Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/7b5670b1-8ca6-4d63-bb38-3d0e5f5bfae6%40googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/529F2359.4060801%40jasonantman.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
