Have you heard about the Puppet Practice Labs? Our free, browser-based, hands-on labs cover a variety of topics for getting started with Puppet — everything from installing the primary server to identifying server roles using package data collection, and much, much more. You can read more about them in my previous blog post.

We’ve designed Puppet Practice labs to make learning Puppet fun, engaging, and memorable for learners of all levels. New labs that are still in development are first added to our Bug Zapper to gather input and feedback from Puppet employees and community members. We use that feedback to improve the labs before posting final versions to the Puppet Practice Lab catalog. We invited you to zap bugs in this blog post.

Today we’re adding eight brand-new Puppet Practice Labs to the Puppet Practice Lab catalog! We’ve also added two new labs to the Bug Zapper that we’re eager to hear your feedback on: Inspect the Agent Catalog and Simulate Changes by Running in No-Op Mode.

Check out the eight new Puppet Practice Labs

1. Install the Primary Server: Learn how to automate your infrastructure on day one!

2. Configure User Access: Control what users can and can't do in Puppet Enterprise to ensure your servers and critical data are protected. Learn how to assign users to roles to make managing permissions more efficient.

3. Install Puppet Agents: You can install the Puppet agent using two different methods: locally using installation script and remotely from the Puppet Enterprise console. Wherever you go, there you are: Both methods enable you to install agents at scale.

4. Configure Agent Certificate Autosigning: Signing stuff is tedious. By configuring Puppet policy-based autosigning to securely automate Puppet agent installation on new nodes, you can eliminate a mundane task and make agent deployment faster.

5. Configure Additional Agent Package Platforms: You can configure the primary Puppet server to provide the packages needed to install agents on different operating systems, making agent deployment faster and easier across your infrastructure.

6. Identify Your Nodes Using External Facts: You'll learn how to find facts about your system with Facter, which you can use as a starting point for writing conditional logic to maintain your system. Forget writing and maintaining extensive script libraries to discover each server’s configuration; Facter does it for you!

7. Identify Server Roles by Using Package Data Collection: Discover which packages are installed across your systems by enabling the package data collection feature via the PE console. You'll use this information to identify the roles of the servers in your environment.

8. Establish Server Roles by Reinstalling Agents With Trusted Facts: Learn how to use trusted facts as a secure way to classify your servers and apply the correct configurations. You'll also learn to install Puppet safely with autosigned certificates for fast-scaling dynamic architectures.

Head to the Puppet Practice Lab Catalog to try out these eight new labs for yourself. Big thanks to everyone who has left feedback so far — developing these labs is truly a collaborative effort and with your help we can take these labs to the next level.

Reach out to our team directly on Slack at #proj-bug-zapper, or contact us at the #team-education channel and via email at [email protected]. Thanks for your participation!

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