Adding and removing agent nodes

You can add nodes you want to manage with Puppet Enterprise (PE) and remove nodes you no longer need.

To add nodes:
  1. Install agents on the nodes.
  2. Accept the CSRs, as explained in Managing certificate signing requests.

Remove agent nodes

Purging a node removes it from your inventory so it is no longer managed by Puppet Enterprise (PE) and allows you to use the node's license on another node.

Purging a node:
  • Removes the node from PuppetDB.
  • Deletes the primary server’s information cache for the node.
  • Makes the license available for another node.
  • Makes the hostname available for another node.
Restriction: Removing (purging) nodes doesn't Uninstall agents from the nodes.
  1. On the agent node, run this command to stop the agent service: service puppet stop
  2. On the primary server, run this command to purge the node: puppet node purge <CERTNAME>
    The node’s certificate is revoked, the certificate revocation list (CRL) is updated, and the node is removed from PuppetDB and the console. The license is now available for another node. The node can't check in or re-register with PuppetDB on the next Puppet run.
  3. If you have compilers, run puppet agent -t on your compilers to distribute the updated CRL to them.
  4. Optional: If the node you removed was pinned to any node groups, you must manually unpin it from the individual node groups (or from all node groups) using the unpin-from-all command.