puppet overview - pros and cons

[David Douthitt]

David Lutterkort wrote:
>> What about diffing support, e.g. compare what's there and what we'd
>> like it to become, kind of a dry-run session to check deviations
>> between spec and reality?
>>     
> Both the command-line tool and the client daemon have a 'noop' option,
> that goes through the motions w/o making changes. After changes to
> configs, I usually test them by running
>         # /usr/sbin/puppetd -v --onetime --noop
Cfengine also has a "dry run" option, though only on the "client" side - 
then it is only the client that can make changes:

cfagent -v --no-splay --dry-run

Splay is the client's "run time delay" in order to spread out the load 
onto the server.  Low-tech (in my opinion) and not completely scalable, 
but decent enough nonetheless.

-- 
David Douthitt
HP-UX, Unixware, Linux, FreeBSD
RHCE, SCSA, Linux+, LPIC-1
http://www.lulu.com/ssrat