I wonder if I just misunderstood something about foreman. The discussions, tutorials and how-to’s almost always revolve around provisioning. But is it a good idea, to use foreman for a replacement of Puppet Enterprise Console or Puppetboard?
Let me explain my situation:
In the past we had 2 puppet servers, one open source puppet server with puppetdb and puppetboard (65 Linux Nodes), and one Puppet Enterprise Server (140 Windows Nodes). Now we want only 1 Puppet Server for all Nodes.
- The Windows Admins used the PE Console and TFS (Azure DevOps Server) for their manifests.
- We Linux guys used Opensource Puppet, puppetdb, puppetserver and bolt with Gitlab and Puppetboard. Puppetboard was used mainly for its customizable puppetdb inventory view.
Now my questions:
Is it a good idea to use a puppetserver/puppetdb/foreman/bolt installation (all on the same host) as a replacement for PE Console and Puppetboard, even if I don’t use provisioning in Foreman?
These are my impressions so far:
Foreman
- Plus: Foreman has a “remote execute” functionality to run tasks on the nodes similar to the “run puppet” button in PE Console
- Minus: Foreman seems not to have a puppetboard inventory-like thing that is easily customizable (displaying custom facts etc.), or I just did not find it
Puppetboard
- Plus: Inventory View is highly customizable with custom facts.
- Minus: Has no remote execute functionality.