We released vRO Puppet plugin earlier this year and in this blog post I shall dig deeper into the functionality that plugin offers plus I shall also cover how you can use this plugin with vRealize Automation. Our previous integration with Puppet was part of vRealize Automation (vRA) Application Services, and with vRO Puppet plugin we are taking our Puppet integration to next level. This plugin can be used not only for application automation but also for OS configurations. If you haven’t already downloaded vRO Puppet plugin, you can get it here – http://vmw.re/1aLwAiq
Now, let me tell you about some of the functionality which you can get through this plugin. Essentially, vRO Puppet plugin is a collection of orchestrator workflows. Following workflows are part of the plugin –
- Register and manage multiple Puppet Masters in the vRO inventory.
- Install and configure the Puppet agent on Linux and Windows-based nodes using SSH and PowerShell, respectively.
- Sign or revoke node certificate signing request on Puppet Master.
- Classify the node using Hiera or Puppet manifests or Rake (experimental)
- Trigger a Puppet agent run
- Remediate a Puppet node.
These workflows can be used in a standalone fashion or they can be combined into one comprehensive workflow. You can tweak anything in existing workflows or you can build extra workflows just to suit needs of your Puppet environment. In addition, using vRO Puppet plugin with vRealize Automation is quite simple. You can trigger plugin workflows in vRA either by setting custom property in vRA blueprints or by creating Advanced Service Designer (ASD) blueprint on top of workflows. Input parameters can also be passed to vRO workflows via custom properties in vRA blueprints.
We are supporting latest releases of Puppet with the plugin. Both Puppet open source and enterprise flavors can be used with vRO Puppet plugin. The plugin supports Puppet Enterprise 3.7 or 3.3 and Puppet Open Source 3.7.1 or 3.6.2 to be precise. Please note that classification using Node Manager, which was introduced in Puppet Enterprise 3.7, is not supported with the plugin yet.
You can get further information about vRO Puppet plugin through documentation here – http://vmw.re/1DFG0HI
