On Thursday, July 12, 2012 4:42:12 PM UTC-5, jcbollinger wrote: > > > > On Thursday, July 12, 2012 8:27:16 AM UTC-5, llo...@oreillyauto.com wrote: >> >> I've been trying to wrap my head around ENCs. >> >> Kelsey Hightower gave me some very useful info in IRC the other day, but >> there are still some things I can't quite get my head around. >> >> From what I can tell, an ENC allows you to assign classes and parameters >> (top scope variables) to a given node or group of nodes. >> >> They cannot declare/define relationships (chain classes together to order >> them) or declare individual resources. >> >> The purpose is to help separate data and configuration. >> >> From reading what documentation I could find on the puppet site (some of >> which is potentially inaccurate / outdated from the wiki), the only way to >> get around these limits is to build your modules, then define a series of >> wrapper classes and super classes and assign these to the nodes. >> >> We've got 2 dozen or so systems that we manage with puppet, and so far >> have done it all just using node defs. >> >> What benefits would there be in using an ENC, from an admin side of >> things? Is it something that would be worth my time in setting up? >> >> I'm trying to understand this, and my long term goal is to maximize the >> benefit we get from puppet. >> > > If your node definitions contain only class and maybe variable > declarations -- a good practice -- then you would not have much trouble > doing the same thing with an ENC. With that said, I don't think there are > very many sites that would benefit from *writing their own* ENCs. If you > are using Foreman or the Puppet Dashboard, however, then you already have > an ENC available to you, with a spiffy UI and everything. > > Overall, as long as you're satisfied with writing node definitions in > Puppet DSL, I don't think it's worth the time and effort to change. > > Our node defs are mostly classes and variables, but they also do some ordering using chaining syntax, because, for an web app server, for example, you need to make sure that Java is installed before Tomcat.
We don't currently make use of Stages, and while I see their benefit, I don't know that we need them with how we are using puppet currently. I'm not sure that we need an ENC either, as using the node defs is working well for us, and we typically only have one person working on a given module or node at any given time, but I want to maximize the benefit we get from puppet while making it easy to maintain and, as needed, reuse bits and pieces. > > John > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/puppet-users/-/Iw2AYnjcc6EJ. To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en.
