Thank you, Jim. I will research your ideas as well. On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Jim Ficarra <jimfica...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In our organization, we created a chocolatey package for the puppet > client hosted on our internal nuget server. We then created a powershell > module that includes several tools for our environment, one of which > remotely invokes the installation of chocolatey on windows systems in > parallel, and another to invoke the installation of the chocolatey puppet > package from our internal nuget server, also in parallel. The chocolatey > package contains the majority of the MSI properties for configuration, and > we leverage the installargs option to pass in the puppet environment we > need to point to. The “meat” for this is just looping through a bunch of > invoke-commands and running them as jobs after passing in one or more > servers with a simple text file manifest. This avoids the “patch party” > scenario. > > Of course the above depends on having WinRM configured as Rob mentioned. > If you do have WinRM enabled, you can take out the chocolatey package > pre-requisite as in our case (e.g. if you don’t have a nuget server setup), > and then still build a simple PowerShell script to use invoke-command kick > off the installation of the msi with parameters on multiple servers, as > jobs, so they occur in parallel. You could have the msi hosted on a share > to access during the installation. > > Do you have any tools such as Microsoft System Center to package and > deploy? That would be another way to do this, or a myriad of other tools > that can be used to deploy. For example, I’ve not used psexec for puppet, > but you could try to use psexec from www.sysinternals.com to execute as > well. It has an option (-c) to copy the the program to the remote system > before it executes, so that can serve to ensure the MSI is available on the > remote node. Note that psexec does create a windows service on the remote > server – so there’s a trace left behind you may need to clean up (yuck). > > Hope this helps. > > -Jim > > > > > *From:* Brian Morris <nomadicextre...@gmail.com> > *Sent:* Thursday, October 02, 2014 6:24 PM > *To:* puppet-users@googlegroups.com > *Subject:* Re: [Puppet Users] Best way to deploy the Puppet client to a > large set of Windows servers? > > Thank you, Rob. I have a lot of reading to do. :) > > On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Rob Reynolds <r...@puppetlabs.com> wrote: > >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 3:30 PM, Brian Morris <nomadicextre...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> Hello all, >>> >>> There may come a need for me to perform a wide deployment of the Puppet >>> client to Windows servers. I am curious to know how others have >>> accomplished this. >>> >>> Concerns I have: >>> >>> - No other tools are in place that readily come to mind for pushing the >>> client out. VCM is in play, but is difficult at best to deploy other >>> applications with. The client could certainly be placed on a central file >>> share, but pulling rather than pushing sounds like it will require direct >>> Sysadmin involvement. >>> >>> - To ease the pain I could set the Puppet Master to auto-sign >>> certificates for a small window of time, but am unsure if this would be >>> worthwhile. >>> >>> - I can imagine a "patch party" where a bunch of Sysadmins each get a >>> list of servers to go hand perform the installation on, but I am hoping for >>> something much cleaner than this. >>> >> >> I'm not sure yet if we have an official/recommended way of getting the >> agent installed. I believe we are working on making this process easier >> though. >> >> So now an alternative recommendation of going about it - >> >> Is WinRm configured on these servers? I'm guessing no b/c they are stock. >> If so you have a much easier time moving forward, but it is not configured >> by default. So the next option is Wmi calls. >> >> There is a really low level Wmi call you can make to >> Win32_Process.Create[1] that you can use to create a process to install the >> puppet agent if you have administrative privileges. You can do this >> remotely. This works with Windows OOTB. >> >> If one could connect, you could pass a command to msiexec to run the >> installer with a url to the agent msi. You would want to put it on a file >> share that all of these servers can access (or use the official download). >> Take a look at automated installation[2] and msi properties[3]. >> >> So you could set your call as "msiexec" and args "/qn /i >> \\file\share\location\of\puppet.msi PUPPET_MASTER_SERVER= >> puppet.example.com" >> >> You could run that command as fire and forget and wait for them to all >> finish up as they check in with the master. I did a little searching and >> found a couple of gems out there that are related to WMI[4][5]. >> >> Note: I once worked on a tool where we did something very similar to this. >> >> [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa389388.aspx >> [2] >> https://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/install_puppet/install_windows.html#automated-installation >> [3] >> https://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/install_puppet/install_windows.html#msi-properties >> [4] https://rubygems.org/gems/ruby-wmi >> [5] https://rubygems.org/gems/wmi-lite >> >> >> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Puppet Users" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/0cb53cf7-6e6e-41c3-8855-8217cfaae923%40googlegroups.com >>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/0cb53cf7-6e6e-41c3-8855-8217cfaae923%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>> . >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> Rob Reynolds >> Developer, Puppet Labs >> >> *Join us at PuppetConf 2014 <http://www.puppetconf.com/>, September 20-24 >> in San Francisco* >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the >> Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. >> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/puppet-users/pSo5jKyezmU/unsubscribe. >> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to >> puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CAMJiBK7BaHkWypqZsQA2Y6f%3D1cj9FZ4E1KTfJntXw7F_9xRAWA%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CAMJiBK7BaHkWypqZsQA2Y6f%3D1cj9FZ4E1KTfJntXw7F_9xRAWA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. >> >> >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Puppet Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CAH8X0%2BFs7j-yepqMj5Xg4Xqh5pSZ_THKAwQj4PhcxadnUREAXA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CAH8X0%2BFs7j-yepqMj5Xg4Xqh5pSZ_THKAwQj4PhcxadnUREAXA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/puppet-users/pSo5jKyezmU/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/BD2F4C1A3B534835B1B21883B4F882EA%40JimHPPavilionG6 > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/BD2F4C1A3B534835B1B21883B4F882EA%40JimHPPavilionG6?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. 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