Learning MCollective

Chapter 2. Installation

In this part of the book, we will walk you through building a fully functional MCollective environment on several of your hosts. You will deploy a simple configuration for your initial tests. We will use this baseline configuration as we expand your knowledge in each of the following chapters.

We will not review every configuration parameter or utilize every feature in this initial installation. The initial installation will provide a basic setup suitable for learning. In Part II, we’ll step back and review this configuration in detail, along with optional changes that can be used to fine-tune your installation.

This baseline configuration will use:

• ActiveMQ as the messaging broker middleware

• The Pre-Shared Key (PSK) plugin to validate data sent between the clients and the servers

• A simple Admin User Has Total Control authorization scheme

You’ll find this baseline configuration useful as a foundation to build upon as your MCollective installation grows.

Requirements

Before you install MCollective, you will need to check that you have all of the required elements, as listed in the next two sections.

Puppet Labs Repositories

If you are using RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu Linux and are willing to use the Puppet Labs repositories, you can skip this section, as all of these components are available in your operating system packages or supplied in the Puppet Labs Products or Dependencies repositories.

Operating System

The operating system ...