My first puppet module

Last month i released my first puppet module at puppet forge (https://forge.puppetlabs.com/andulla/vsphere_conf)  to get practice with puppet module development:

This module automates the described steps necessary to get the Puppet Labs Inc. VMware vSphere module up and running: https://forge.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs/vsphere

It does the following:

• It installs the necessary package dependencies:
  • zlib1g-dev, libxslt1-dev and build-essential for Debian 7 and 8, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and similar via the apt-get package manager:

    apt-get install zlib1g-dev libxslt1-dev build-essential

  • zlib-devel, libxslt-devel, patch and gcc on RHEL 6 and 7, CentOS and similar via yum package manager:

    yum install zlib-devel libxslt-devel patch gcc

• Install the required gems rbvmomi and hocon with command:

  /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/bin/gem install rbvmomi hocon --no-ri --no-doc

• Note: the module will only work on Puppet Enterprise 2015.2 Using the gem command via /opt/puppet/bin is currently not part of this module.

• It configures the necessary credentials and optional configurations within the /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/vcenter.conf so you will get a following example vcenter.conf file:

vcenter: {
  host: "myvcenterhost.test.com"
  user: "myvcenterhostuser"
  password: "myvcenterhostuserpassword"
  port: 443
  insecure: false
  ssl: false
}

The module itself is made out of three important files:

• init.pp.: Installs the missing Packages via the puppet package resource type, the missing ruby gems via puppet package resource type using the provider puppet_gem and configures the vcenter.conf file via the file resource type and using a template file vcenter.conf.erb:

 class vsphere_conf (
   $packages = $vsphere_conf::params::packages,
   $gems = $vsphere_conf::params::gems,
   $provider = $vsphere_conf::params:provider,
   $host = $vsphere_conf::params::host,
   $user = $vsphere_conf::params::user,
   $password = $vsphere_conf::params::password,
   $port = $vsphere_conf::params::port,
   $insecure = $vsphere_conf::params::insecure,
   $ssl = $vsphere_conf::params::ssl,
 ) inherits vsphere_conf::params {
  #Install required packages
  package { $packages:
   ensure => installed,
   provider => $provider,
   notify => Exec['rbvmomiandhocon'],
  }

  # Install required gems
  package { $gems:
    ensure => present,
    provider => puppet_gem,
  }

  file { '/etc/puppetlabs/puppet/vcenter.conf':
    owner => 'root',
    group => 'root',
    mode => '0644',
    content => template('vsphere_conf/vcenter.conf.erb'),
  }
}

• params.pp: fills the default parameter for the module itself. The package list will be created with check of the current fact osfamily (Redhat or Debian).

class vsphere_conf::params {
  $host = 'myvcenter.test.com'
  $user = 'myuser'
  $password = 'mypassword'
  $port = 443
  $insecure = false
  $ssl = true
  $gems = [rbvmomi,hocon]
case $::osfamily {
  'Debian' : {
     $packages = ['zlib1g-dev','libxslt1-dev','build-essential']
     $provider = 'apt'
   }
  'Redhat' : {
     $packages = ['zlib-devel', 'libxslt-devel', 'patch', 'gcc']
     $provider = 'yum'
   }
 }
}

• vcenter.conf.erb: will be used and filled with parameters $host, $user, $password, $port, $insecure and $ssl:

vcenter: {
host: "<%= @host %>"
user: "<%= @user %>"
password: "<%= @password %>"
port: "<%= @port %>"
insecure: "<%= @insecure %>"
ssl: "<%= @ssl %>"
}

Thats it! 3 files and you automate all the described steps. Now everyone using the Puppet Labs Inc. vSphere module can reuse to quickly setup the vSphere module inside a Puppet Enterprise environment.

Inside my Puppet Enterprise with Node Classifier it looks like this:

I can recommend the following Beginner’s Guide if you would like to start developing you own module: http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/module_guides/bgtm.html?_ga=1.211367442.641876350.1434375001

Time to automate!