How can i install puppet cluster on Amazon EC2 instances? - amazon-web-services

Question

I'm using ubuntu 12.04 AMI in EC2 for creating puppet cluster and i'm facing problems while configuring it.
The problem is that the master is not able to recognize the slaves.
Do i need more packages other than mysql
/etc/mysql/my.cnf
what changes do i need in the above file?

Answer 1

Puppet is a configuration management tool that allows automating the process of defining and maintaining consistent state of several developer workstations. It is a descriptive, centralized and client-server based system. The central server is configured and the clients synchronize themselves to it to ensure that all systems end in the described state. For instance, the task of ensuring the same development environment on all developer systems in a project can be easily accomplished using Puppet.
Here is a quick procedure to set up a Puppet server and one Puppet client on Amazon EC2 instance having Ubuntu OS, and also installing Puppet Dashboard on server to view the status of the clients.
Prerequisites
Two ec2 instances set up with Ubuntu ami.
One instance named as puppetserver and other as puppetclient.
Procedure
Puppet server and client set up
Configuring hosts files View the /etc/hostname file on puppetserver and puppetclient. These are the Puppet server and client hostnames respectively
Edit /etc/hosts file on both the systems. Add server and client IPs and corresponding hostnames.
Setting up the Puppet Server
Enabling the Puppet Labs Package repository
Download the "puppetlabs-release" package for the OS (here, Ubuntu 12.04) on Puppet server
Install the package by running
dpkg -i
Run apt-get update to get new list of available packages.
For example, to enable the repository for Ubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin:
wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-precise.deb
sudo dpkg -i puppetlabs-release-precise.deb
sudo apt-get updateInstall Puppet
Install Puppet
Install puppetmaster
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install puppetmaster
Setting up the Puppet Client
Install Puppet on the puppet client(s)
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install puppet
Specify the Puppet server domain name on the client. To do this, modify the
/etc/puppet/puppet.conf
file and add the line
server=.
The client can now connect to the Puppet master.
Start the Puppet agent service for establishing first communication between server and client.
sudo puppet agent --verbose --no-daemonize --onetime
This starts a connection to the Puppet master process that is listening on port 8140 on the Puppet server. The output will be verbose, and the agent will not continue running in the background as a daemon. Also, it will run only one time, that is, after the connection is closed, the agent process will exit. The output looks like:
The client has made itself known to the server by sending an SSL certificate request. The server needs to certify the client.
To view the list of yet-to-be signed certificates on the server
sudo puppet cert --list
This lists the following
Sign the client node's SSL certificate
sudo puppet cert --sign <puppet client name>
Client can now establish full connection to the server and poll the Puppet master for any configuration updations.
Defining Configurations
We have set up puppet on both Puppet server and client and have also established communication between the two machines. Next step is to define the configuration for the target systems using puppet manifest. These manifests are specified in site.pp file.
As an example, we define a manifest that will create a helloworld.txt file on the client.
Defining manifest
Put the following manifest definition in /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp file,
node "<puppet client hostname>" { file { "/home/ubuntu/helloworld.txt": content => "This is test content", ensure => file, owner => "ubuntu", group => "ubuntu", mode => 0644 } }
This manifest defines that the puppet client must have a helloworld.txt file
in /home/ubuntu/ folder with content, This is test content.
Getting changes on client
On puppet client, run the following command.
sudo puppet agent -t
The puppet client pulls the manifests defined in the site.pp file on the puppet server. It learned that a file named helloworld.txt with defined specifications, is expected to exist at location /home/ubuntu. Since, no such file exists on the client, the agent takes action and creates the file.
View the 'helloworld.txt' file
To verify that the client exists in a state defined by the Puppet server, run the following command
sudo vi /home/ubuntu/helloworld.txt
The file contents are same as defined in the manifest definition on the server.
Installing Puppet Dashboard
Overview
Puppet Dashboard is a GUI that interfaces with Puppet. It can be used to view and report the status of all the client nodes. Puppet dashboard runs on port 3000 on the puppet server.
Following are the steps for set up
Installing external dependencies
Dashboard is a Ruby on Rails web app and thus requires certain software to be installed
RubyGems
Rake version 0.8.3 or newer
MySQL database server version 5.x
Ruby-MySQL bindings version 2.7.x or 2.8.x
Install the packages
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential irb libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient-dev libopenssl-ruby libreadline-ruby mysql-server rake rdoc ri ruby ruby-dev
Install RubyGems package system
( URL="http://production.cf.rubygems.org/rubygems/rubygems-1.3.7.tgz" PACKAGE=$(echo $URL | sed "s/\.[^\.]*$//; s/^.*\///") cd $(mktemp -d /tmp/install_rubygems.XXXXXXXXXX) && \ wget -c -t10 -T20 -q $URL && \ tar xfz $PACKAGE.tgz && \ cd $PACKAGE && \ sudo ruby setup.rb )
Create gem as an alternative name for gem1.8
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gem gem /usr/bin/gem1.8 1
Installing Puppet Dashboard
Install puppet-dashboard from puppetlabs package repository
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install puppet-dashboard
Configuring Dashboard
Modify the database.yml file. It can be found at /usr/share/puppet-dashboard/config/database.yml.
Under the key-value pairs for production environment, the database value 'dashboard_production' specifies the dashboard database name, and username value 'dashboard' specifies the user for this database. In the next step, we will create both the database and the user. password value is the password for MySQL.
Creating and Configuring MySQL database
Create the user and database for puppet-dashboard. Navigate to MySQL command line
CREATE DATABASE dashboard_production CHARACTER SET utf8; CREATE USER 'dashboard'#'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dashboard_production.* TO 'dashboard'#'localhost';
Configure MySQL's maximum packet size to permit larger rows in database
set global max_allowed_packet = 33554432;
Also modify the mysql configuration file /etc/mysql/my.cnf
Allowing 32MB allows an occasional 17MB row with plenty of spare room
max_allowed_packet = 32M
To create dashboard tables, run the following command in the puppet-dashboard folder
cd /usr/share/puppet-dashboard rake RAILS_ENV=production db:migrate
Testing that Dashboard is working
Start the dashboard using Ruby’s built-in WEBrick server
cd /usr/share/puppet-dashboard
sudo ./script/server -e production
Dashboard instance starts on port 3000 using the “production” environment. Dashboard’s UI can be viewed at :3000
Configure puppet
Both the puppet server and client need to be configured for the dashboard to receive reports.
Configure agent nodes to submit reports to master by turning their reporting ON.
puppet.conf (on each agent)
[agent]
report = true
Configure the server. Add the http report handler to puppet server's reports setting and set reporturl to Dashboard instance’s reports/upload URL
puppet.conf (on puppet master)
[master]
reports = store, http
reporturl = http://<server hostname>:3000/reports/upload
For enabling dashboard's external node classifier(ENC),
puppet.conf (on puppet master)
[master]
node_terminus = exec
external_nodes = /usr/bin/env PUPPET_DASHBOARD_URL=http://<server hostname>:3000 /usr/share/puppet-dashboard/bin/external_node
Testing Puppet's connection to Dashboard
Restart the puppet master
Run one of the puppet agents to test the configurations
sudo puppet agent -t
The output will be:
This means that the report has arrived. To process it, we will activate the delayed_job workers.
Starting delayed_job workers
Run the following command
cd /usr/share/puppet-dashboard
sudo env RAILS_ENV=production script/delayed_job -p dashboard -n 1 -m start
This starts the delayed_job workers, and completes the pending task.
Thus, puppet is now installed on two EC2 instances, out of which one is server and the other is client. Also, puppet-dashboard is installed to view the status of the client nodes.