On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Tim Bell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure where the statement that Puppet does not scale well comes
> from...

it is pretty well documented by Jarle Bjørgeengen for ;login (usenix):

https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/february-2010-volume-35-number-1/puppet-and-cfengine-compared-time-and-resource

This one is more recent:

http://www.blogcompiler.com/2012/09/30/scalability-of-cfengine-and-puppet-2/

And another happy puppet user:

http://my.opera.com/marcomarongiu/blog/2012/06/17/why-i-gave-up-puppet-and-chose-cfengine-3

> You do need to have enough puppet masters and architect it according to the
> best practises but the books tell you how to do this.

exactly, a developer solution to every problem: throw more hardware at
it, hardware is cheap ;-)

Specially in virtual environments puppet is a resource hog if you
compare it to cfengine. I have exactly one cfengine policy host
controlling nearly 400 hosts. Its load is nearly always 0. This is
quite normal. The policy host has 3 different sets of policies: test,
staging and production. This is a vm with a grand 256Mb ram and 1
vcpu. This host is our kickstart/fai installation server as well.

SPOF you may think. Not really, hosts cache their policies, so when
the policy master needs patching, whatever, we just do it. The hosts
apply their cached policies.

I am pretty much sure I could not run the same load with the same
hardware with puppet (actually, I know, I tested it).

O well, in the end as long as people use something sane I am happy.
--
natxo