Learning Puppet 4

Chapter 2. Creating a Learning Environment

In this chapter, we will create a virtualized environment suitable for learning and testing Puppet. We will utilize Vagrant and VirtualBox to set up this environment on your desktop or laptop. You can keep using this environment long after you have finished this book, or rebuild it quickly any time you’d like to test something new.

If you are an experienced developer or operations engineer, you are welcome to use a testing environment of your own choice. Anything that can host multiple Linux nodes will work. Puppet’s needs are minimal. Any of the following would be suitable for use as a Puppet test lab:

• A spare system that you can install Linux on
• An Amazon Web Services (AWS) Free Tier instance
• An OpenStack DevStack development instance
• A VMware Free vSphere ESXi solo instance
• A Vagrant development environment on your personal computer

You can build your own test lab using one of the preceding solutions, or you can use an existing test lab you maintain. In all cases, I recommend using an OS compatible with RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 for learning purposes. The CentOS platform is freely available, and fully supported by both Red Hat and Puppet Labs. This will allow you to breeze through the learning exercises without distractions.

We recommend and are going to use Vagrant for the remainder of this book, for the following reasons:

• It is easier for you to set up and get started quickly.
• You can more easily carry it with you, and restart ...