[TriLUG] Curious

[Z-man]

Thanks everyone for you thoughts and suggestions on this topic.  I have
collected a list of criteria and am starting to measure products (in as
much as possible according to manufacturer's web sites) against our needs.
This is where your opinions really help shape our direction and save me
time by not investigating products based on real world results.

Thanks again.

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Matt Pusateri <mpusateri at wickedtrails.com>
wrote:

> it’s been while, so maybe I just remember it as XML.  On a better note,
> apparently Foreman will work with Salt with a plugin.
>
> On Oct 27, 2014, at 12:19 PM, William Sutton <william at trilug.org> wrote:
>
> > Unless there's something about CFE3 that you've seen and I haven't... I
> haven't seen any XML.  I've seen a lot of CFE2-like configuration, but no
> XML.
> >
> > William Sutton
> >
> > On Mon, 27 Oct 2014, Matt Pusateri wrote:
> >
> >> CFE2 didn't scale when I used it, and I just couldn't go the CFE3 XML
> route...
> >>
> >> Matt P
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >>> On Oct 27, 2014, at 9:12 AM, William Sutton <william at trilug.org>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Interesting to read this.  I went to a Puppet camp some months ago
> after spending 6 months migrating our CFEngine 2 configuration to CFEngine
> 3. So far that's my only configuration management experience.
> >>>
> >>> The good:
> >>> Puppet does guarantee that it reaches a final known (and knowable)
> state. CFE doesn't.  It just keeps rerunning the ruleset until it thinks it
> got the right answer.
> >>>
> >>> CF Engine is client-based, so each machine processes its ruleset,
> leaving the server (policy hub in CFE-speak) relatively bored.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The bad:
> >>> CFE and Puppet have similar, but not identical rule language.  Sort of
> like how Perl and C have similar syntax, but not identical.
> >>>
> >>> Puppet is policy-server-based.  For any number of client machines, you
> may have to have a cluster of Puppet policy servers to handle what they
> openly referred to as the "thundering herd" (self-DDoS, if you ask me)
> problem.
> >>>
> >>> Puppet may have a final dependency list, but as Igor pointed out, you
> have to spell it out in your ruleset.
> >>>
> >>> OTOH, with CFEngine, you may never know if you got there.  CFE keeps
> iterating until it thinks it found the answer--sort of like your co-worker
> who keeps telling the boss something until he thinks he said the right
> thing.
> >>>
> >>> Moreover, CFE evaluates and caches variables.  Sometimes, it doesn't
> evaluate the variable at all.  That's a problem when the variable is used
> in filesystem path expansion.  It's a crisis when it nukes the contents of
> your resolv.conf file.
> >>>
> >>> Also on the minus side for CFE--they routinely have bugs that haven't
> been fixed.  I actually ranted for 5-10 minutes on their Freenode IRC
> channel about how crummy it was, and its biggest supporters, while
> conceding that it was pretty crummy, argued that it wasn't as bad as it
> could be.
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>>
> >>> I'm going to have to look at saltstack given Matt's high praise.
> There are some cool looking things about Puppet, but also some things that
> make me twitch a bit.  As far as CFEngine goes, I've seen both v2 and v3
> (which, incidentally, are syntactically different; sufficiently so to hurt
> your brain), and while I can (usually) make it do what I need, it has its
> own deficiencies.
> >>>
> >>> William Sutton
> >>>
> >>>> On Sun, 26 Oct 2014, Igor Partola wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Puppet being morse code centric sounds about right. It is its own
> language, has its own client/server setup yet can be run without it, has a
> specific file layout you have to follow... It is confusing and weird. I use
> it because it gets the job done and because I have not yet figured out how
> to use Ansible :)
> >>>>
> >>>> There are some great things about puppet:
> >>>>
> >>>> - Has basic built in types that are idempotent. This is huge. I don't
> want to reinvent this, and here Puppet delivers.
> >>>>
> >>>> - It supports the right built-in types: package, file, service, user,
> crontab.
> >>>>
> >>>> - Extensive library of good modules to control things like Postgres,
> Redis, MySQL, MongoDB, etc.
> >>>>
> >>>> - It works when done right.
> >>>>
> >>>> The bad:
> >>>>
> >>>> - The language is confusing. Includes, imports, etc. suck. Creating
> dependence is confusing and can be repetitive.
> >>>>
> >>>> - It is much too slow for what it does. Basic package installation is
> done one at a time. Some really simple manifests that would take 5 seconds
> to run by hand, take minutes.
> >>>>
> >>>> - Too many obscure features. The docs literally have things like "we
> just released this feature, but don't use it. It's a bad idea."
> >>>>
> >>>> - Errors cascade, but there is now way to tell puppet to stop on
> errors. This way if installing MySQL fails, it will attempt to do other
> unrelated tasks instead of saying "ok fix the MySQL thing first ".
> >>>>
> >>>> In conclusion, I am not converting any existing projects from Puppet
> to anything else, but I am looking at alternatives.
> >>>>
> >>>> Igor
> >>>> --
> >>>> This message was sent to: William <william at trilug.org>
> >>>> To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from
> that address.
> >>>> TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> >>>> Unsubscribe or edit options on the web    :
> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/william%40trilug.org
> >>>> Welcome to TriLUG: http://trilug.org/welcome
> >>> --
> >>> This message was sent to: M. Pusateri <mpusateri at wickedtrails.com>
> >>> To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from
> that address.
> >>> TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> >>> Unsubscribe or edit options on the web    :
> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/mpusateri%40wickedtrails.com
> >>> Welcome to TriLUG: http://trilug.org/welcome
> >> --
> >> This message was sent to: William <william at trilug.org>
> >> To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from
> that address.
> >> TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> >> Unsubscribe or edit options on the web       :
> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/william%40trilug.org
> >> Welcome to TriLUG: http://trilug.org/welcome
> >>
> > --
> > This message was sent to: M. Pusateri <mpusateri at wickedtrails.com>
> > To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from
> that address.
> > TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> > Unsubscribe or edit options on the web        :
> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/mpusateri%40wickedtrails.com
> > Welcome to TriLUG: http://trilug.org/welcome
>
> --
> This message was sent to: Drummer <czdrummer at gmail.com>
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> Welcome to TriLUG: http://trilug.org/welcome
>



-- 
Craig Zimmer
***********
"Boldness of action is often wrongfully perceived as uneducated."