README.md

Puppet Language

Language constructs

• Resource type syntax
• Conditional logic
• Variables and scope
• Data types
• Defined types
• Advanced function usage (e.g. functions that accept lambdas)
• Puppet-language functions
• Relationships and ordering

Declarative coding concepts

• Resource idempotence
• The type, title and namevar of a resource
• The types and providers abstraction layer
• Idempotent exec resources

Tasks

• Passing parameters
• Passing parameters using powershell
• Returning data from tasks
• Secure coding practices

Plans

• Basic plan writing
• Error handling in plans
• Dynamic target manipulation (i.e. changing the targeted nodes using in-plan logic)
• Returning data from a plan
• Composition of plans (plans that run plans)

Ruby

Ruby basics

• Debugging & exploring ruby using pry
• Conditional logic
• Variables and scope
• Data types
• Object-orientated programming

Puppet-specific ruby

• Custom facts
• Custom functions
• Rspec-puppet and testing
• Testing using Litmus
• Types and providers
• Custom report processors
• Custom hiera backends
• Puppet faces?

Puppet Enterprise

Architecture

• Installing PE
• Macro architecture i.e. compilers, primary, secondary
• Micro architecture, what services do, how they are configured, what are their dependencies, are they stateful or stateless, can they be load-balanced, how are they made HA?
  • ACE-Server
  • Orchestration-services
  • PXP
  • Puppetserver
  • Console-services
  • RBAC
  • Certificate authority
  • Puppetdb
  • Postgresql
  • Code manager
  • File sync
• Tuning and scaling, typical load patterns
• Proxies and their effect on PE communications
• Log location and how to configure more detailed logging
• Common debugging tools and methods
• Metrics ingestion from support script using Support’s tooling
• Postgres debugging using pgbadger
• Garbage collection analysis using gceasy.io

APIs

• Which API endpoints are available and what they do
• How APIs are used in the normal operation of Puppet
• Puppet DB queries & PQL

Puppet Application Manager

• Containers
• Kubernetes
• Installing CD4PE
• Installing Comply

Coding Best Practices

• Style and naming conventions
• The roles and profiles pattern
• Component modules and how they are different from profiles
• Composition of profiles to reduce duplication (i.e. profile::base vs profile::base::windows)
• Data separation using hiera
• Hiera hierarchy design
• Handling of sensitive data
• PDK

Workflow

• Git workflows using r10k
• Development Practices for Ops
• Workflows using CD4PE
• CD4PE Custom deployment policies to implement advanced deployments

OS Skills

Windows

• General system administration
• Deploying Chocolatey
• Chocolatey Custom Packaging
• DSC
• Active Directory
• WMI Providers
• Privilege escalation
• Powershell scripting

UNIX

• General system administration
• Service management frameworks (e.g. systemd)
• Moving files between machines
• Configuring package managers
• Creating custom packages
• Users and permissions
• Scripting (Bash, Perl etc.)