Choosing an architecture

Puppet Enterprise — 2019.1

This version is out of date. For current versions, see Puppet Enterprise support lifecycle.

Sections

There are several configurations available for Puppet Enterprise. The configuration you use depends on the number of nodes in your environment and the resources required to serve agent catalogs.


Configuration	Description	Node limit
Monolithic installation (Recommended)	All infrastructure components are installed on the master. This installation type is the easiest to install, upgrade, and troubleshoot.	Up to 4,000
Monolithic installation with compilers	Similar to a monolithic installation, plus one or more compilers and a load balancer which help distribute the agent catalog compilation workload.	4,000–20,000
Monolithic installation with compilers and standalone PE-PostgreSQL	Similar to a monolithic installation with compilers, plus a separate node which hosts the PE-PostgreSQL instance.	More than 20,000

Tip: You can add high availability to a monolithic installation, with or without compilers, by configuring a replica of your master. High availability isn't supported with standalone PE-PostgreSQL

Monolithic installation

Graphic showing the monolithic architecture, where end users interact with a single master, and the master interacts with multiple agents.

Monolithic installation with compilers

Graphic showing the monolithic architecture with compilers, where end users interact with a single master. The master interacts with multiple compilers and multiple agents.

Monolithic installation with compilers and standalone PE-PostgreSQL

Graphic showing the monolithic architecture with compilers and a standalone PE-PostgreSQL node, where end users interact with a single master. The master interacts with multiple compilers and multiple agents.