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Introduction
Hello Ninjas!! Have you heard the name PUPPET? Here Puppet is the software configuration management tool. Interesting right!!😃
Have you wondered how this works? Then you are at the right place. Coding Ninjas have got you covered.
Later in this article, we will look into the definition of Puppet and understand the advanced concepts of reporting and monitoring in Puppet.
Let's start with the basic definition of a puppet.
Puppet
Puppet is a software configuration management tool. The most common Operating System for simultaneously managing multiple application servers is one like Linux or Windows. But Puppet can also be used by various systems, such as Mac OS servers, Cisco routers, and IBM data centers.
Okay! Now let's move to the advanced concepts of reporting and monitoring in Puppet.
Analyzing Changes Across Puppet Runs
Basically, the topic" Analyzing Changes across Puppet Runs "comes under the main topic, i.e., Monitoring and Reporting. Several tools are available in the Puppet Enterprise (PE) console to stay updated on the actual state of your infrastructure.
You can also view reports, look into issues, and review the outcomes of planned or unforeseen changes to your Puppet code. Analyzing Changes across Puppet Runs is one of the tools.
Event Pages
Event pages are used to display a summary of the infrastructure's activity in the console. You can assess the details in the console and make the necessary changes. Find the common issue in the events that also lead to the events. You can investigate specific class, node, and resource events to find out what went wrong or changed in the event pages.
You must be thinking, what must be the Event?
Event
When Puppet Enterprise begins to make changes in a particular property of a given resource event occurs there.
Events help while reviewing, you can see particular information about what has changed in your system or what isn't working properly.
There are six types of events mentioned below:
👉Failure: The Event occurred when a property was out of sync. Puppet tried to make some changes but was unsuccessful.
👉Corrective Change: The Event occurred when the puppet console discovered an imbalance between the applied list and the property configuration and corrected the property to match the list.
👉Intentional Change: An event occurred when a catalog change was applied to a property in the console.
👉Corrective no-op: When Puppet discovered a lack of consistency between the recently applied catalog and the configuration of a property, Puppet was given instructions not to make changes to this resource through the —noop command-line option, the noop setting or the noop => true meta parameter. Puppet logs a necessary option of no-op event and reports the change instead of making a corrective change.
👉Intentional no-op: Puppet would have applied catalog changes to a property, but Puppet was warned not to make changes on this resource.
👉Skip: If a resource's schedule meta parameter is set and the scheduled time does not arrive when the Run occurs, the resource logs a skip event on the Events page. This is correct for a user-defined schedule but not for built-in scheduled tasks that occur weekly, daily, or at other intervals.
Working with the Events Page
When your deployment is stable, no changes are being made, and everything is working as it should, the event page shows little activity and may not appear all that interesting.
However, the Events page allows you to respond quickly when change occurs, such as when packages need to be upgraded, security threats pose a threat, or systems fail.
When you are on the Events page and a Puppet run, data is fetched when the page loads and is not refreshed until the page is closed or reloaded.
This ensures that an investigation will not be hampered by changing data.
You can tell how recent the data is by looking at the timestamp at the top of the page.
Reload the page to update the information with the most recent events.
Working with the event pages took place in four different ways mentioned below:
🍁Monitoring Infrastructure with the Events Summary Pane
To help you investigate how a change or failure event affects your entire deployment. The Events summary pane is divided into three categories:
Classes summary - Puppet classes are named chunks of code that are kept in modules. Large or medium-sized functional units, such as all the packages, configuration files, and services required to execute an application, are often configured by classes.
Nodes summary - Multiple combinations of classes will generally be directed to nodes that achieve different roles. Node classification is the process of deciding which classes will be applied to a specific node.
Resources summary- Resource events are generated from Puppet reports
🍁Gaining Insight into the Events Detail Pane
Choose any item in the Classes, Nodes, or Resources summary to load more detailed information into the detail pane and start searching for the causes of important events. Change viewpoints to identify common threads among failures or corrective actions and follow them to the root cause.
🍁Analyzing Changes and Failures
The Events page can be used to evaluate or analyze the root causes of events resulting from a Puppet run. For example: to determine the cause of a failure after a Puppet run. In the Events summary pane, choose the class, node, or resource with a failure, and then review the failure details in the Events detail pane.
🍁Understanding Event Display Issues
In some cases, events on the Events page do not appear as expected. These situations are frequently caused by how the console receives data from other Puppet Enterprise components, but they can also occur during the evaluation of your Puppet code.
Runs that restart PuppetDB has not displayed.
Runs without a compiled catalog are not displayed.
Simplified display for some resource types.
Updated modes display without leading zeros.
Puppet Enterprise metrics and status Monitoring
Puppet Enterprise (PE) metrics and status monitoring can be used for your configuring, or you can send the data to support troubleshooting.
puppet_metrics_collector and pe_status_check are the modules that are joined with Puppet Enterprises. These modules allow you to keep track of the overall status of your PE installation.
👉puppet_metrics_collector
It collects metrics from Puppet Enterprise (PE) service status endpoints.
It is installed with PE and is partially enabled by default.
👉pe_status_check
Based on preset indicators, pe_status_check can notify you when Puppet Enterprise (PE) installation is no longer in an ideal situation and describe how to resolve or improve the identified issue.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are user roles in PE?
The user roles are a set of permissions or privileges. These roles can be assigned to a group of users. The users assigned a role get all the permissions associated with the user role.
What is the most basic unit for modeling in puppets?
Modeling system setups begin with resources. A resource, such as a package or service, describes a specific aspect of a system. It goes to Puppet to ask about adding it to the catalog.
What is a puppet, and how it works?
Puppet offers the capability to specify the software and configuration that a system needs and then, after initial setup, maintain a given state. To set configuration options for a particular environment or infrastructure, you utilize a declarative Domain Specific Language (DSL) akin to Ruby.
What functions does a puppet server perform?
An open-source tool for managing and deploying software configuration is called Puppet. The most popular operating systems for controlling numerous application servers at once are Linux and Windows. However, Puppet may also be used on various platforms, such as Mac OS servers, Cisco routers, and IBM mainframes.
Is Puppet a monitoring tool?
External services can use performance and status metrics from Puppet Server to track the health and performance of a server over time.
Conclusion
In this article, we go through advanced concepts of reporting and monitoring in Puppet in a detailed manner. Also, look into subtopics like events, their type, working with event pages, etc.
After reading about the Advanced Concepts of Reporting and monitoring in Puppet, Are you interested in reading/exploring more themes on Puppet? Don't worry; Coding Ninjas has you covered.
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