On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 6:24 PM, Sean Millichamp <s...@bruenor.org> wrote:
> **
> On Mon, 2012-05-21 at 15:39 -0600, Deepak Giridharagopal wrote:
>
> 1) The data stored in PuppetDB is entirely driven by puppetmasters
> compiling catalogs for agents. If your entire database exploded and lost
> all data, everything will be 100% repopulated within around $runinterval
> minutes.
>
> I think that this is a somewhat dangerous line of thinking. Please
> correct me if my understanding of storedconfigs are wrong, but if I am
> managing a resource with resources { 'type': purge => true } (or a purged
> directory populated file resources) and any subset of those resources are
> exported resources then, if my "entire database exploded", would I not have
> Puppet purging resources that haven't repopulated during this repopulation
> time? They would obviously be replaced, but if those were critical
> resources (think exported Nagios configs, /etc/hosts entries, or the like)
> then this could be a really big problem.
>
> To me storedconfigs are one of the killer features in Puppet. We are using
> them for a handful of critical things and I plan to only expand their use.
> I'm glad that Puppet Labs is focusing some attention on them, but this
> attitude of we can wait out a repopulation has me worried. Again, maybe
> I'm misunderstanding how purging with exported resources actually works,
> but my experience has been that if you clear the exported resource from the
> database so goes the exported record in a purge situation.
>
I didn't mean to imply that there's no point to backing things up or caring
about uptime...I apologize if I gave that impression. I only offered that
piece of information to help people understand that the data PuppetDB is
storing isn't "unique" per se; it's easy to recover data that was lost. But
just because the data can be easily reconstituted doesn't mean that losing
it is consequence-free! You are exactly right about the potential gotchas
that exist if that data disappears and agents check in, particularly if you
have purge set. The context for that statement was a larger discussion of
operational requirements, and I was just trying to articulate the continuum
of possible failure scenarios.
For any current or future features (upgrades, service restarts, whatever),
we *never* assume that it's okay to trash your data.
> In a slightly different vein, does PuppetDB support a cluster or HA
> configuration? I assume at least active/passive must be okay. Any gotchas
> to watch for?
>
Active/passive is perfectly fine; no gotchas.
Cheers,
deepak
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Puppet Users" group.
To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@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.
