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PuppetDB collects data generated by Puppet. It enables advanced Puppet features like the inventory service and exported resources, and can be the foundation for other applications that use Puppet's data.
To start using PuppetDB today:
- Review the system requirements below (and, optionally, our scaling recommendations).
- If you'd like to migrate existing exported resources from your ActiveRecord storeconfigs database, please see the documentation on Migrating Data.
- Choose your installation method:
- easy install using the PuppetDB puppet module on our recommended platforms
- install from packages on our recommended platforms
- advanced install on any other *nix.
This manual covers the 1.6.x series of PuppetDB releases, which is backwards-compatible with the 1.5.x series but adds several new features. See the release notes for information on all changes since the final 1.0.x release.
PuppetDB stores:
- The most recent facts from every node
- The most recent catalog for every node
- Optionally, fourteen days (configurable) of event reports for every node
Together, these give you a huge inventory of metadata about every node in your infrastructure and a searchable database of every single resource being managed on any node.
Puppet itself can search a subset of this data using exported resources, which allow nodes to manage resources on other nodes. This is similar to the capabilities of the legacy ActiveRecord storeconfigs interface, but much, much faster. The remaining data is available through PuppetDB's query APIs (see navigation sidebar for details) and Puppet's inventory service.
In future versions, PuppetDB will store historical catalogs for every node.
Puppet Labs provides packages and a Puppet module for PuppetDB which simplify setup of its SSL certificates and init scripts. These packages are available for the following operating systems:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or 6 or any distro derived from it (including CentOS)
- Debian Squeeze (see here for JDK 1.7 packages), Wheezy, or Sid
- Ubuntu 12.10, 12.04 LTS, 10.04 LTS (see here for JDK 1.7 packages), 11.10
- Fedora 18, 19 or 20
See here for instructions for installing via the PuppetDB puppet module.
See here for instructions for installing from OS packages.
If you're willing to do some manual configuration, PuppetDB can run on any Unix-like OS with JDK 1.7 or higher, including:
- Recent MacOS X versions (using built-in Java support)
- Nearly any Linux distribution (using vendor's OpenJDK packages)
- Nearly any *nix system running a recent Oracle-provided JDK
See here for advanced installation instructions.
Your site's puppet masters must be running Puppet 3.5.1 or later. You will need to connect your puppet masters to PuppetDB after installing it. If you wish to use PuppetDB with standalone nodes that are running puppet apply, every node must be running 3.5.1 or later.
- Due to packaging changes related to the integration of PuppetDB with Puppet Enterprise, the latest PuppetDB packages are not available for use with Puppet Enterprise 2.8 or below. Users of Puppet Enterprise 2.8 or below can use PuppetDB 1.1, and should visit the PuppetDB 1.1 documentation. PuppetDB is now included by default in Puppet Enterprise, and will be released on a separate schedule.
PuppetDB will be a critical component of your Puppet deployment and so should be run on a robust and reliable server.
However, it can do a lot with fairly modest hardware: in benchmarks using real-world catalogs from a customer, a single 2012 laptop (16 GB of RAM, consumer-grade SSD, and quad-core processor) running PuppetDB and PostgreSQL was able to keep up with sustained input from 8,000 simulated Puppet nodes checking in every 30 minutes. Powerful server-grade hardware will perform even better.
The actual requirements will vary wildly depending on your site's size and characteristics. At smallish sites, you may even be able to run PuppetDB on your puppet master server.
For more on fitting PuppetDB to your site, see "Scaling Recommendations."
PuppetDB is developed openly, and is released under the Apache 2.0 license. You can get the source --- and contribute to it! --- at the PuppetDB GitHub repo. Bugs and feature requests are welcome at Puppet Labs's issue tracker.