On Saturday, January 4, 2014 7:46:58 AM UTC-6, Jason Antman wrote: > > After digressing into this discussion on #puppet last night, I was > wondering what the community feelings are on ENCs vs Hiera... > > I know that Dashboard/Console still exists, but have heard rumors (for > years) of it being either replaced by something else, or totally > rewritten. Then there's Foreman, and a bunch of us with homegrown ENCs. > On the other hand, it seems that the bleeding edge of the community, or > many of those who are most active and knowledgeable, eschew the ENC idea > and generally respond with "use Hiera". > > - Am I right that a community consensus seems to be forming around "ENCs > are bad" or "Don't use ENCs", use Hiera instead, essentially for > everyone other than Puppet Enterprise users who get a supported Console > install? > - If so, is this because of some actual failing of ENCs, or is it > because the currently available ENCs fail in certain areas? > >
I can't speak to any community consensus, but I'll give you my own two cents. - I do not think there's anything inherently wrong with GUI configuration control panels. On the contrary, such things can be very valuable. In that expansive sense I have no objection whatever to ENCs. - To the best of my knowledge, all widely-available GUI configuration panels for Puppet leverage the node_terminus extension point to provide node data. - A node_terminus script (the strict sense of "external node classifier") provides a few capabilities that hiera does not. In particular, you can use an ENC to set the node environment, and to set top-scope variables without any corresponding manifest code. Technically, an ENC can also classify nodes without any manifest code, but you only need one line of manifest code to enable node classification via hiera. - On the other hand, I strongly recommend providing class parameter customizations via hiera and automated data binding. It reduces opportunities for breakage associated with Puppet's requirement that if a class declaration provides parameter values then it must be the first declaration of its target class to be evaluated. There is no inherent reason, however, why a GUI configuration panel could not use hiera to provide class parameters, and even to feed node classification itself to Puppet. - I do not use an ENC myself. I do not find the advantages to be particularly compelling for my own relatively modest needs, and I certainly don't find them sufficient to justify me building my own GUI configuration application. John -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/68f3d5de-54eb-470e-a680-2447418dfff2%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
