The easy way to configure PuppetDB is to use the puppetdb Puppet module on Puppet Forge at https://forge.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs/puppetdb. We will install PuppetDB using the module first to show how quickly you can deploy PuppetDB. In the subsequent section, we'll configure PuppetDB manually to show how all the components fit together.

The steps to install and use PuppetDB that we will outline are as follows:

We will start with a vanilla EL6 machine and install PuppetDB using the puppetdb module. In Chapter 4, Public Modules, we used a Puppetfile in combination with librarian-puppet or r10k to download modules. We used the puppetdb module since it was a good example of dependencies; we will rely on PuppetDB being available to our catalog worker for this example. If you do not already have PuppetDB downloaded, do it using one of those methods or simply use puppet module install puppetlabs-puppetdb as shown in the following screenshot:

After installing the puppetdb module, we need to install the puppetlabs repo on our PuppetDB machine and install Puppet using the following command:

[root@puppetdb ~]# yum -y install http://yum.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-pc1-el-7.noarch.rpm
puppetlabs-release-pc1-el-7.noarch.rpm                        | 5.1 kB  00:00:00     
Examining /var/tmp/yum-root-dfBZAN/puppetlabs-release-pc1-el-7.noarch.rpm: puppetlabs-release-pc1-1.0.0-1.el6.noarch
Marking /var/tmp/yum-root-dfBZAN/puppetlabs-release-pc1-el-7.noarch.rpm as an update to puppetlabs-release-pc1-0.9.2-1.el7.noarch
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
...
root@puppetdb ~]# yum -y install puppetdb
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package puppetdb.noarch 0:3.2.0-1.el7 will be installed
-->Processing Dependency: net-tools for package: puppetdb-3.2.0-1.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless for package: puppetdb-3.2.0-1.el7.noarch
--> Running transaction check
---> Package java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless.x86_64 1:1.8.0.65-2.b17.el7_1 will be installed
-->Processing Dependency: jpackage-utils for package: 1:java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless-1.8.0.65-2.b17.el7_1.x86_64
...

Our next step is to deploy PuppetDB on the PuppetDB machine using Puppet. We'll create a wrapper class to install and configure PuppetDB on our master, as shown in the following code (in the next chapter this will become a profile). Wrapper classes, or profiles, are classes that bundle lower-level classes (building blocks) into higher-level classes.

classpdb {
  # puppetdb class
  class { 'puppetdb::server': }
  class { 'puppetdb::database::postgresql': listen_addresses => '*' }
}

At this point, the PuppetDB server also needs network ports opened in iptables; the two ports are 5432 (postgresql) and 8081 (puppetdb). Using our knowledge of the firewall module, we could do this with the following snippet included in our pdb class:

firewall {'5432 postgresql':
  action => 'accept',
  proto  => 'tcp',
  dport  => '5432',
}
firewall {'8081 puppetdb':
  action => 'accept',
  proto  => 'tcp',
  dport  => '8081',
}

We then apply this pdb class to our PuppetDB machine. For this example, I used the hiera_include method and the following puppetdb.yaml file:

---
classes: pdb

Now we run Puppet agent on PuppetDB to have PuppetDB installed (running Puppet agent creates the SSL keys for our PuppetDB server as well; remember to sign those on the master).

Back on our workers, we need to tell Puppet to use PuppetDB; we can do this by defining a puppet::master class that configures Puppet and applying it to our workers:

class puppet::master {
  class {'puppetdb::master::config':
    puppetdb_server     => 'puppetdb.example.com',
    puppet_service_name => 'httpd',
  }
}

Now we configure our stand.yaml file to include the previous class as follows:

---
classes: puppet::master

The Puppet master will need to be able to resolve puppetdb.example.com, either through DNS or static entries in /etc/hosts. Now run Puppet on our Puppet master to have puppetserver configured to use PuppetDB. The master will attempt to communicate with the PuppetDB machine over port 8081. You'll need the firewall (iptables) rules to allow this access at this point.

Now we can test that PuppetDB is operating by using the puppet node status command as follows:

[root@stand ~]# puppet node status puppetdb.example.com

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