Puppet Interview Questions and Answers

Puppet is a tool for managing configuration and is broadly used for the purpose of automation of the administrative tasks. The tool Puppet aids the server in deployment, managing and in the configuration. A request is sent to Puppet Master, which is also referred to as Server, by the Puppet Agent which it is also referred to as Client. And then the Server ( Puppet Master ) push the configuration on the client. It can be run on Windows and is also capable of running on a system like UNIX. Puppet has a good range of scalability which is very beneficial for administrative tasks.

MCollective is a framework of orchestration which is dynamically strong. It has the ability to run actions simultaneously over hundreds and thousands of servers with the help of existing plugins.

The details of the configuration of each puppet agent are written in the native language of Puppet. The configuration details are found in the Puppet master. It is written in the language that is understood by puppet and is called Manifests. The names of the manifest files have the extension i.e. '.pp’. In manifests of Puppet, the configuration of the client is specified.

The factor is taken into use for writing manifests which are based on the data that are agent-specific. You can also be defined. A factor is a tool used by puppet for gathering information of a system when the puppet is run. Factor is a library of Puppet.

Earlier, managing and configuring a very huge number of computer group that was done in a series of steps. This design it was used earlier with the series of steps turned out to be sophisticated as the time passed. So, Puppet took a different path by modelling all things. A catalogue is received by every node about the relations and resources. The node compares the catalog with the system state at present. Then, the required changes are made for leading the system into to order and compliance.

There is not a particular and strict size for an organisation to get the benefit from Puppet. Although there are organisations which are more probable to get benefit with their sizes. So, all sizes can get the benefit while there are some sites that have more favour to be benefited from the puppet. Organisations which have a lot of servers and face difficulty in manually managing the servers will find it helpful and beneficial to use the puppet. While on the other hand, those organisations which have a few servers are more likely to manage and maintain the service with less hardship. So it would be more beneficial for organisations having many servers to use the puppet as compared to those with a few servers.

The most efficient way to install Puppet in Factor and updating it is through the package management system of the operating system. It should be done with the repository of your vendor. It can also be done with the public repositories of the Puppet Lab. It should be noticed that the old version of Puppet should be completely removed before upgrading it. Every file of the library should also be removed before graduation.

An MRI Ruby interpreter is needed by Puppet. There are some variants of Ruby which are never tested while some variants are tested with puppet very thoroughly and is done much more than other variants of Ruby. Run the variant of Ruby on your system for checking it. Since Puppet agent packages bundle their self environment of Ruby, therefore it does not depend upon the variant of Ruby of the OS.

The Puppet agent can be installed on the system with any of Ruby's variant or without installing Ruby. Similarly, The Puppet Enterprise also does not depend on the variant of Ruby of the OS since it bundles the self environment of Ruby. Puppet Enterprise can be installed on the system without installing Ruby or with any of the variant of Ruby.

Resources are the basic unit to model the configurations of the system. An aspect of a system is described by every resource such as some particular package or any particular service. A resource's desired state is described by the declaration of a resource. It approaches puppet for adding it in the catalog. When the catalog is applied by puppet to any target system then the resources contained are managed by it only. It makes sure that the desired state gets matched with the actual state. There are some built-in resource types in Puppet such as files, services, and cron jobs.

Classes are kept in modules and are Puppet's code's named blocks. It can't be utilised till the time they are not appealed with the name. When you declare the 'Class' in your manifests, then they are joined to a catalogue of node authorising the classes from ENC. Classes do the duty of configuration of chunks of the functionality of either huge or mediocre size.

Every node that is managed has the entire copy of the info of configuration of yours in a stand-alone architecture which can run a puppet. Every node compiles the catalogue of its own. The nodes that are managed run the application of Puppet Apply in the stand-alone architecture. The application of Puppet Apply is generally run as a task that is scheduled. It could also be run on demand for small tasks of configuration. The Puppet Apply application can be run on demand for configuring a server in the starting. For the compilation of a catalogue for nodes that are managed by Puppet Apply, it requires access into some of the configuration data's sources.

Here is a dynamic approach to keep data separated from the Puppet Code. For minimising duplication of code, the separated data is kept by Hiera in a hierarchical model which is powerful. Here is very helpful for the declaration of a class which asks for many class parameters. A group of YAML files stores the entire data. Data is requested by Puppet via Hiera that does enquiry YAML files. YAML files are queried by Hiera in “ Fallback Style “.

The catalogue is a document used by the puppet agent while the Catalogueration of a node. Puppet agent downloads the catalog through Puppet Master. For every resource, the desired state is described by the catalog which should be controlled. A catalog is compiled in puppet with help of some resources of information of configuration. The first one is 'agent provided data'. The second resource is 'Puppet Manifests'. And the third resource used by puppet for compiling a catalogue is 'external resource'.

The founder of Puppet is Kanies and it was founded in the year 2005. It was produced by Puppet. The Apache License 2.0 introduced the free variant of Puppet which has been written in Clojure, Ruby and C++.

Puppet man and Puppet help show help for other subcommands of Puppet online.

Puppet module is a compilation of data and manifests. These have a particular structure of the directory. Modules are recommended as the best practice for the organisation of every Puppy Manifests. They are very helpful in order to organise the Puppet Code due to the reason that it aids in splitting the code into many manifests. Manifests are generally the puppet programs. Puppet code is contained in the manifests and the name of their files utilise the extension i.e. “ .pp “.

Functions are supported by puppet and there are two kinds of functions that the Puppet supports. These are ‘statement function' and ‘rvalue function'. In the language of Puppet, your own function can be returned by you for transforming data and to construct the values. A calculated value is returned by a function from the final expression. Statements don't have any type of return and are used for performing the duties such as to import modules of Puppet into the new file of the manifest. Rvalue has the return type two return values. This can be bought to use only if a value is required by the statement.

PSON is a variant of JSON that is used by puppet to serialize data to spread over the network. JSON and PSON are not different from each other in terms of representation of factors such as boolean and objects. The serialized form is needed by JSON to be a valid pin code which generally is UTF-8. For referring to PSON, " text/pson" MIME type is used by Puppet and it also uses the " pson " MIME type.

A simple syntax for documentation is documented presently on the wiki page of Puppet Manifest Documentation. This simple syntax what documentation is included in the language of Puppet. This inline documentation is used by the doc command of Puppet for the generation of HTML documents or RDoc automatically for the modules and for the Manifests.

Puppet Labs is a private company which works on reframing the problems and issues that arise in the automation of the server. Puppet Labs was earlier known as Reductive Labs.

In Puppet, Hiera is a powerful way to store (class parameter) data outside the pp files. It also stores this data in an efficient hierarchical way so to reduce program duplication. Hiera is especially beneficial when you want to declare a class that needs a lot of class parameters.