Hiera

Hiera allows you to create a hierarchy of node information. Using Hiera, you can separate your variables and data from your modules. You start by defining what that hierarchy will be, by ordering lookups in the main configuration file, hiera.yaml. The hierarchy is based on facts. Any fact can be used, even your own custom facts may be used. The values of the facts are then used as values for the YAML files stored in a directory, usually called hieradata. More information on Hiera can be found on the Puppet Labs website at http://docs.puppetlabs.com/hiera/latest.

Tip

Facts are case sensitive in Hiera and templates. This could be important when writing your hiera.yaml script.

Configuring Hiera

Hiera only needs to be installed on your Puppet master nodes. Using the Puppet Labs repo, Hiera is installed by the puppet-agent package. Our installation pulled down puppet-agent-1.2.2-1.el7.x86_64, which installs Hiera version 3.0.1, as shown here:

[thomas@stand ~]$ hiera --version
3.0.1

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