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Set up a Puppet master and agent configuration in Compute Engine

Author(s): @ksakib , Published: 2018-06-11

Contributed by the Google Cloud community. Not official Google documentation.

Objectives

Set up the virtual machines
Install and run Puppet master
Install Puppet agent and request a certificate from the master
Sign the certificate to establish communication between the Puppet master and Puppet agent
Write a manifest for a simple web app and deploy it to the Puppet agent

Set up the virtual machines

Create a small(1 shared vCPU + 1.7 GB memory) Compute Engine instance with the OS Ubuntu 16.04 xenial and with 'Allow HTTP traffic' option checked under Firewall section and name is puppet-agent.
Create another Compute Engine instance but this time a with 1 vCPU + 3.75 GB memory with the same OS (Ubuntu 16.04 xenial). Keep the default firewall option. No need to check http or https. Name the instance as puppet-master.

Install and run Puppet master

SSH into the puppet-master instance, then run the following commands to install the Puppet server:

wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-pc1-xenial.deb
sudo dpkg -i puppetlabs-release-pc1-xenial.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install puppetserver

Start the Puppet server by running the following command:
```
sudo systemctl start puppetserver
```
Make sure the Puppet server has started by running the following command:
```
sudo systemctl status puppetserver
```

You should see a see a line that says "active (running)" in the result.

Configure the Puppet server to start at boot by running the following command:
```
sudo systemctl enable puppetserver
```

Install and run the Puppet agent, and request a certificate from the Puppet master

SSH into the puppet-agent instance, then run the following commands to install the Puppet agent:

wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-pc1-xenial.deb
sudo dpkg -i puppetlabs-release-pc1-xenial.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install puppet-agent

Before starting Puppet agent, edit the /etc/hosts file to identify the Puppet master to use to request the certificate. At the end of the file, specify the internal IP address of the puppet-master Compute Engine instance, as shown following:
```
[PUPPET_MASTER_COMPUTE_ENGINE_INSTANCE_INTERNAL_IP_ADDRESS]      Puppet
```
You can get the internal IP address of the puppet-master Compute Engine instance from the VM instances page in the Cloud Console.

Run the following commands to run the Puppet agent:

sudo systemctl start puppet
sudo systemctl enable puppet

Sign the certificate to establish communication between the Puppet master and Puppet agent

The first time the Puppet agent runs, it sends a certificate signing request to the Puppet master. To list all unsigned certificate requests, run the following command on the puppet-master instance:
```
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet cert list
```

We'll use the --all option to sign certificate:

sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet cert sign --all

You can also do a single sign by

    sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet cert sign puppet-agent.c.YOUR_PROJECT_ID.internal

Write a simple webserver module and Manifest that will install Apache2 and write hello world page

On the puppet-master instance, navigate to the folder /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/manifests/, make a manifest file named site.pp, and copy the following code into it:
```
node /agent/{
  include webserver
}
```
Navigate to the /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules directory and make a new directory by running the following command:
```
sudo mkdir -p webserver/manifests
```

In the new manifests directory, create a file named init.pp, and copy the following code into it:

class webserver {
  package { 'apache2':
   ensure => present
  }
  file {'/var/www/html/index.html': # resource type file and filename
    ensure => present, # make sure it exists
    content => "<h1>This page is installed from Puppet Master</h1>", # content of the file
  }
}

Run the following command on the puppet-agent instance to get the catalog from the Puppet master and apply the manifest:
```
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet agent --test
```
Copy the external IP address of the puppet-agent instance (you can get this from the VM instances page in the Cloud Console) and paste it into your browser. You should see a web page with the message "This page is installed from Puppet Master".

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