Puppet Catalog Testing

At the London Puppet User Group Meetup in May 2016, Mike Mead spoke about how we use catalog testing to quickly check for correctness in our Puppet manifests.

Transcript

2. PUPPET CATALOG TESTING_
3. BASICS OF PUPPET_ • Compile a catalog • Apply the catalog
4. BASICS OF PUPPET_ • Compile a catalog • Apply the catalog
5. WHAT IS A CATALOG_ “A catalog is a document that describes the desired system state for one specific computer.”
6. TESTING THE CATALOG_ • Simple • Fail fast
7. TESTING THE CATALOG_ • rspec-puppet • puppet-catalog-test
8. RSPEC PUPPET_ • Unit testing framework • Finds dependency cycles • Check that the catalog contains a particular resource
9. describe 'apache', :type => 'class' do it { should compile.with_all_deps } end
10. describe 'apache', :type => 'class' do context "on a Debian OS" do let(:facts) {{ :osfamily => 'Debian' }} it { should compile.with_all_deps } end context "on a RedHat OS" do let(:facts) {{ :osfamily => 'RedHat' }} it { should compile.with_all_deps } end end
11. Apache RedHat Debian 2.2 2.4 2.2 2.4
12. RSPEC PUPPET_ • Designed for testing individual modules • Requires a large investment in time
13. PUPPET CATALOG TEST_ • Multi-threaded • Scenario testing • Custom facts and hiera
14. __default_facts: &default_facts architecture: x86_64 centos_webserver: <<: *default_facts osfamily: RedHat operatingsystem: CentOS fqdn: webserver-a.local ubuntu_webserver: <<: *default_facts osfamily: Debian operatingsystem: Ubuntu fqdn: webserver-b.local
15. [INFO] Using puppet 3.8.7 [PASSED] centos_webserver (compile time: 0.064285695 seconds) [PASSED] ubuntu_webserver (compile time: 0.064342 seconds) ---------------------------------------- Compiled 2 catalogs in 0.1131 seconds (avg: 0.0566 seconds)
16. [INFO] Using puppet 3.8.7 [FAILED] ubuntu_webserver (compile time: 0.086619958 seconds) [FAILED] centos_webserver (compile time: 0.08667039 seconds) ---------------------------------------- Compiled 2 catalogs in 0.1462 seconds (avg: 0.0731 seconds) 2 test cases failed. [F] centos_webserver: Could not find class nginx for webserver-a on node webserver-a [F] ubuntu_webserver: Could not find class nginx for webserver-b on node webserver-b 2 / 2 FAILED
17. PUPPET CATALOG TEST_ • No catalog inspection • No checks for missing dependencies • or dependency cycles
18. IN AN IDEAL WORLD_ • 100% RSpec coverage
19. IT’S NOT AN IDEAL WORLD_ • RSpec is hard to retrofit • ...and it’s time-consuming to write tests for • Puppet-catalog-test is quick to implement, easy to maintain, and gives great ROI
20. TIME FOR A LIVE DEMO!_
21. https://github.com/mikemead/puppet-catalog-test-example https://github.com/invadersmustdie/puppet-catalog-test https://github.com/rodjek/rspec-puppet
22. KEEP IN TOUCH_ http://www.scalefactory.com/ https://github.com/mikemead @mikemead86 mikem@scalefactory.com