Puppet, Chef or CFEngine?

[Kevin Fries]

At my work, we use AD for access across all our Windows and Linux servers.
Then we use puppet to manage consistent permissions on the /etc/sudoers
file, auto_home, and ssh access.

This combination works great!!!
On Nov 9, 2011 4:24 PM, "Dan Dubovik" <dandubo at gmail.com> wrote:

> We currently use puppet.  We have used it for quite some time, and just
> revisited our configuration management system, to see if it was still the
> right way to go.
>
> In looking at Chef, CFEngine and Puppet, we decided to stick with Puppet.
>  The cost of changing over a number of extremely complex systems to a new
> management service was simply too high, for minimal (if any) gain.
>
> On the topic of user management, while a shell script may be easier /
> faster in the short term, over time (and once an environment is
> sufficiently large) it can result in an inconsistent environment.  Servers
> can be down, unresponsive, have some random failure, and if not immediately
> and manually remediated, you end up with users on servers that shouldn't
> be, missing users on others, and old passwords on yet others.
>
> Using Puppet, you can either maintain /etc/{passwd|group|shadow} (wouldn't
> personally do this, but it is an option, so included here in the interest
> of being complete), or you can use the 'user' and 'group' resource type (
> http://docs.puppetlabs.com/references/stable/type.html#user) to maintain
> users across the environment.  This is if you need / want to continue using
> local users.  Personally, I'm with Bryan, and prefer a central
> authentication method, as it resolves many of the problems you would have
> with local users, and provides for an easier method of auditing user
> accounts.
>
> -- Dan.
>
> On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold at obnosis.com>wrote:
>
>> Thanks to all who responded.
>> I believe this is an excellent subject for a blog after about 10,000 lab
>> testing package comparison hours!
>> Laugh!
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Bryan O'Neal <
>> Bryan.ONeal at theonealandassociates.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Personal opinion - for large scale use with many people maintaining
>>> different sections puppet is one of the best - however it is really
>>> only good for file management. Since nearly everything on a linux
>>> system is a file, this should not be a problem. As for user management
>>> - I am still under the opinion on that (unless you are a pure Linux
>>> environment) this should be solved by using Active Directory for
>>> authentication and pam for access mismanagement. (if you don't want to
>>> integrate your services with pam they probably have a simple
>>> configuration file that controls access management that could be
>>> handled by puppet just as easily)
>>> Chef is more extensible with access to a full ruby stack - however
>>> unless you have a very small group of well coordinated developers who
>>> insist on adhering to standards you will rapidly find your
>>> provisioning code will become unwieldy and almost useless as you
>>> inheritances start overriding key portions without notice as to why or
>>> what section did what. In the rite hands the flexibly is an asset that
>>> may help solve key problems. In the wrong hands it will propagate
>>> problems whose effect compound over time until the entire system is
>>> scraped.
>>>
>>> Disclaimer - I know very little regarding this compared to others. I
>>> use puppet, write manifests, build systems, etc. I am not responsible
>>> for the engineering.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 3:56 PM, Ed <plug at 0x1b.com> wrote:
>>> > On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 4:59 PM, James Mcphee <jmcphe at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> I am also looking at implementing one of these at some point in the
>>> near
>>> >> future.  The standard scripts over ssh is simple and relatively well
>>> >> controlled, but teaching new people how to use them and maintaining
>>> them in
>>> >> a sane fashion is troublesome.  I've used a few HP, Dell, Sun, and IBM
>>> >> config products in the past and they were all bad enough I went back
>>> to
>>> >> scripts in no time.
>>> >>
>>> >> On Nov 5, 2011 11:33 AM, "Lisa Kachold" <lisakachold at obnosis.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Can anyone chime in on using enterprise mass systems configuration
>>> and
>>> >>> management tools?
>>> >>>
>>> >>> What are you using? Chef, Puppet or CFEngine and why?
>>> >>>
>>> >
>>> > I like CFengine - the task based focus is on "promises" and the
>>> > install is painless. The only ruff spot I could point to is with
>>> > application updates - the interface to yum is less polished than some
>>> > - updates work if you work on them as groups vs particular apps. There
>>> > are many promises online and in the maillists for particular tasks. I
>>> > think there is even a starter pack on github somewhere. CFengine fits
>>> > well into ITIL and managing IT - lots of IT - and it has it's own
>>> > directory in /var too!  ;)
>>> >
>>> > The RH world has worked with Cobbler plus Puppet - this is getting
>>> > tighter with Puppet plus TheForman and Pulp - if I remember the
>>> > roadmap.
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>>
>>
>>
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