ami-lab/AmI-Platform — pull request #231 by aismail (2013-08-16 11:55:33+00:00)
Title: Provision one crunch node using Puppet + EC2

## Need
As specified in my 2nd PhD report, I want to be able to run an experiment starting from a data dump in EC2 with a single command. This requires us to do several things: open/close machines programatically, provision them using Puppet and run the experiment.

As a first step in that direction, I want to have a "crunch node" up and running automatically by using Puppet.

## Steps
* [ ] get some puppet into the repo (migrate our existing Chef to it)
* [ ] use boto library (+ ~/.boto file which contains credentials) in order to boot an image from a recent Ubuntu ami
* [ ] install puppet on that node (I'm not sure how - paramiko maybe? or use the post-init script feature of EC2)
* [ ] apply recipe for the node

## Notes
I'm choosing masterless puppet because of these insights: http://www.slideshare.net/PuppetLabs/bashton-masterless-puppet, to which I add that having a puppet master for a transitory experiment is a hassle with no real benefit.