[[!meta title="Migrating away from puppet to cdist"]]

For those not being subscribed to the puppet-mailing list,
here's my "goodbye and thanks for the fish"-message to puppet:

    Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 19:26:06 +0200
    From: Nico -telmich- Schottelius <nico-puppet-users --at-- schottelius.org>
    To: puppet-users --at-- @googlegroups.com
    Cc: steven-puppet-users --at-- @armstrong.cc
    Subject: [Puppet Users] Migrating away from puppet to cdist
    
    Good morning puppet users,
    
    we, some sysadmins [0] at the computer science departement [1]
    at ETH Zurich [2], developed a new configuration management
    system called cdist [3], to which we migrate from our puppet
    configuration.
    
    I'm writing to this list for two reasons:
    
    1) Say thanks and goodbye to puppet-*
    
      Puppet in contrast to other systems emphasised on "define what I want"
      versus "define what todo", which is a great approach and we've
      shameless cloned this approach.
    
      Also we discussed a lot of ideas used in puppet (as well as other
      systems), from which we learned.
    
      Puppet was the first CM I seriously adopted and it initially saved
      me a lot of time. Thanks to the puppet team!
    
    2) Show other puppet users how to get around (common) puppet problems
    
      We're pretty confident that cdist solves some issues we've seen
      in puppet and in the sense of FOSS, we'd like to inform others
      how we've solved those issues in cdist:
    
      Bootstrap problem
        With puppet we needed to have ruby + some gems on the target
        hosts. In cdist we only use a posix shell on the target plus
        common UNIX tools (like find, rm, grep), as defined by POSIX.
    
      Complex CA / SSL setup / issues
        We've had some trouble using ssl certificates, especially with
        multi master and frequent reinstallations. In cdist we only   
        rely on SSH.                                               
    
      Defining configuration in multiple locations
        Defining a type multiple times in different locations in puppet
        requires use of virtual ressources. In cdist you don't need to 
        care about this, as long as the parameters stay exactly the   
        same.                                                      
    
      Error messages
        If you encountered errors like "400 Bad Request",
        "undefined method `closed?'", "can't convert nil into String",
        or "undefined method `closed?' for nil:NilClass", you'll be   
        happy to hear that cdist's error messages contain usable
        information.
    
      Very easy extension
        Whereas puppet has modules, types and providers, cdist only knows
        about types. A type in cdist contains some functionality,
        independent of whether you or upstream decided to implement it.
    
      Pull versus Push approach
        Puppet requires one (or more for redundancy reasons) central server,
        because clients usually contact the master and ask for changes.
    
        Cdist operatas in push mode and can be run from a small machine
        like the sysadmin notebook.
    
      Integrated version control
        Cdist is usually cloned via git from upstream and changes are
        kept in a different git branch. This encourages you to use the
        existing version control for your own configuration.
    
      Integrated clean documentation
        All cdist documentation is included into the release and can be
        compiled into HTML or manpages. Cdist also includes a reference
        document that contains all available paths, types and environment
        variables.
    
      Unobstrusive upgrade path
        Upgrading cdist just requires one "git pull" on your master machine,
        no update needed on any client.
    
      Clean release cycle
        When in puppet things stopped to work within a minor version,
        the cdist release cycle clearly defines that any incompatibility
        forces a change on at least the minor (1.x -> 1.y) version.
    
        If you stay on a specific version, like 1.5, things will not break. Promised.
    
      No automatic (magic) behaviour
        In puppet you can use title or name without setting it explicitly.
        This may be useful in some parts, but maybe surprising as well.
    
        In cdist only the globally available environment variables are
        documented and have the same meaning everywhere.
    
      Codebase / Bugs
        Puppet contains around 100k lines of code, with cdist you only need
        to debug ~ 1k/2k lines (core/with types) lines of code
        (according to sloccount[5]).
    
      Age
        Warning: Although most pointers above may make cdist look like
        superior compared to puppet, cdist is still pretty young
        (~4 months old) and may lack some functionality puppet already has.
    
        cdist is usable in production environments already.
        It may just not work in very fancy or ancient environments.
    
    
    If you've any questions, do not hesitate to subscribe to the cdist
    mailing list [4] and ask them there.
    
    Cheers,
    
    Nico
    
    [0]: http://sans.ethz.ch
    [1]: http://www.inf.ethz.ch
    [2]: http://www.ethz.ch
    [3]: http://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/cdist/
    [4]: http://l.schottelius.org/mailman/listinfo/cdist
    [5]: http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/

[[!tag config eth sysadmin unix]]