On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 8:57 AM, Bruce Richardson <itsbr...@workshy.org> wrote: > On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 02:09:27AM -0800, Exinferis wrote: >> But what we really want to achieve is not to register every node in >> our master configuration (hostnames can totally vary so no wildcard >> matching), but to give the nodes the possibility to request a specific >> class or to report themselves as a specific type of server. > > I think that approach is fundamentally wrong. I do not believe that a > puppetmaster should allow clients to decide which host they are, or > which configuration they receive. The whole point about central > configuration is that you manage it centrally; if your clients can > decide, how do you determine what is going on without inspecting every > host directly?
I disagree that this approach is fundamentally wrong, but it's not always appropriate. Imagine you're managing thousands of desktops. Rather than giving them administrative rights, why not allow them to tweak the configuration that they receive and allow them to tune certain parameters that specify the kind of configuration that will be applied? You can use reports to see what the actual state of your fleet is, you don't need to manage a central database for minor differences. > If most of your hosts are going to have the same configuration, but some > will differ, why not use the default node for the common configuration > and make different entries for other hosts when you need to? What do > you gain by having to go and make configuration changes on each host, > rather than just changing configurations in one place? I can tell you > one thing you lose; you lose the ability to rebuild from scratch a node > that died (with, say, an unrecoverable hard disk). > > If you really want to do this thing, you could achieve it by modifying > your default node configuration so that the extra configuration options > are contained in classes which are only included if certain facts are > true. You then only create those facts on the hosts you want to have > those configurations. I urge you not to do this. And on the flip side, I say that this is a perfectly valid way of managing certain deployments. > > -- > Bruce > > Hierophant: someone who remembers, when you are on the way down, > everything you did to them on the way up. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Puppet Users" group. > To post to this group, send email to puppet-us...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To post to this group, send email to puppet-us...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en.
