PuppetDB 1 » Overview
PuppetDB collects data generated by Puppet. It enables advanced Puppet features like the inventory service and exported resources, and can be the foundation for other applications that use Puppet’s data.
Install It Now
To start using PuppetDB today:
- Review the system requirements below (and, optionally, our scaling recommendations).
- Follow the installation instructions: easy install on our recommended platforms or advanced install on any other *nix.
- Connect your puppet master to PuppetDB (or at standalone puppet apply sites, connect every node to PuppetDB).
Version Note
This manual covers the 1.x series of PuppetDB releases, which has several changes from the 0.9 beta release series. See the release notes for information on all changes since the final 0.9.x release.
Note that, due to issues with package repositories during the run-up to the 1.0 release, the following non-1.x version numbers are actually considered 1.0 release candidates:
- 0.11.0 (actually 1.0rc2)
- 0.10.0 (actually 1.0rc1)
What Data?
In version 1, PuppetDB stores:
Together, these give you a huge inventory of metadata about every node in your infrastructure and a searchable database of every single resource being managed on any node.
Puppet itself can search a subset of this data using exported resources, which allow nodes to manage resources on other nodes. This is similar to the capabilities of the legacy ActiveRecord storeconfigs interface, but much, much faster. The remaining data is available through PuppetDB’s query APIs (see navigation sidebar for details) and Puppet’s inventory service.
What Next?
In future versions, PuppetDB will store reports and historical catalogs for every node.
System Requirements
*nix Server with JDK 1.6+
Standard Install: RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora
Puppet Labs provides packages for PuppetDB which simplify setup of its SSL certificates and init scripts. These packages are available for the following operating systems:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or 6 or any distro derived from it (including CentOS)
- Debian Squeeze, Lenny, Wheezy, or Sid
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 10.04 LTS, 8.04 LTS, 11.10, or 11.04
- Fedora 15 or 16
See here for installation instructions.
Custom Install: Any Unix-like OS
If you’re willing to do some manual configuration, PuppetDB can run on any Unix-like OS with JDK 1.6 or higher, including:
- Recent MacOS X versions (using built-in Java support)
- Nearly any Linux distribution (using vendor’s OpenJDK packages)
- Nearly any *nix system running a recent Oracle-provided JDK
See here for advanced installation instructions.
Puppet 2.7.12
Your site’s puppet masters must be running Puppet 2.7.12 or later. You will need to connect your puppet masters to PuppetDB after installing it. If you wish to use PuppetDB with standalone nodes that are running puppet apply, every node must be running 2.7.12 or later.
Robust Hardware
PuppetDB will be a critical component of your Puppet deployment and so should be run on a robust and reliable server.
However, it can do a lot with fairly modest hardware: in benchmarks using real-world catalogs from a customer, a single 2012 laptop (16 GB of RAM, consumer-grade SSD, and quad-core processor) running PuppetDB and PostgreSQL was able to keep up with sustained input from 8,000 simulated Puppet nodes checking in every 30 minutes. Powerful server-grade hardware will perform even better.
The actual requirements will vary wildly depending on your site’s size and characteristics. At smallish sites, you may even be able to run PuppetDB on your puppet master server.
For more on fitting PuppetDB to your site, see “Scaling Recommendations.”
Open Source
PuppetDB is developed openly, and is released under the Apache 2.0 license. You can get the source — and contribute to it! — at the PuppetDB GitHub repo. Bugs and feature requests are welcome at Puppet Labs’s issue tracker.