[TriLUG] Curious

[magnus at yonderway.com]

On 27.10.2014 09:52, Igor Partola wrote:

> One debate I keep having with people is whether it makes sense to use
> Puppet or bake an EC2 instance image and just keep spinning up 
> machines
> based on that.

Yes, it does.

But the cool kids call it "Docker" now. ;)

> I detest the pre-built image solution for a few reasons.
> First, you have to reinvent a part of what Puppet already does for 
> you.

Not if you're using it to build your images.

> For
> example, if you want a service that listens on a specific IP address, 
> you
> now have to create a script that will update the configuration file.

ERB doesn't depend on Puppet. You can still use templating on golden 
image based machines (as well as a number of other templating engines... 
or completely different solutions to the problem).

> Second, software updates are a pain.

The don't do them.

Reprovision your virtual machines from a patched golden image (which 
you've already unit tested in CI, right?)

> Finally, pre-built images lock you into EC2.

Actually, that's not true.

Once you build your universal base image, that can be converted to 
other formats (like AMI) or whatever your private cloud solution 
prefers. Or even a VirtualBox image for developer laptops.

> Puppet ensures
> that the two are in fact identical.

"Identicalish". If they were identical, you'd have problems.

-M