puppetdb.conf: Configuring a Puppet/PuppetDB connection

Configuring a Puppet/PuppetDB connection


The puppetdb.conf file contains the hostname and port of the PuppetDB server. It is only used if you are using PuppetDB and have connected your Puppet master to it.

The Puppet master makes HTTPS connections to PuppetDB to store catalogs, facts, and new reports. It also uses PuppetDB to answer queries, such as those necessary to support exported resources. If the PuppetDB instance is down, depending on the configuration of the Puppet master, it could cause the Puppet run to fail. This document discusses configuration options for the puppetdb.conf file, including settings to make the PuppetDB terminus more tolerant of failures.



The location of the confdir varies, depending on the OS, Puppet distribution, and user account. See the configuration directory documentation for details.


server_urls =



[main] Settings

The [main] section defines all of the PuppetDB terminus settings.


This setting specifies how the Puppet master should connect to PuppetDB. The configuration should look something like:

server_urls =

Puppet requires the use of PuppetDB’s secure HTTPS port. You cannot use the unencrypted HTTP port.

You can use a comma-separated list of URLs if there are multiple PuppetDB instances available. A server_urls config that supports two PuppetDBs would look like:

server_urls =,

The default value is https://puppetdb:8081.

The PuppetDB terminus will always attempt to connect to the first PuppetDB instance specified (listed above as puppetdb1). If a server-side exception occurs, or the request takes too long (see server_url_timeout), the PuppetDB terminus will attempt the same operation on the next instance in the list.


This setting allows you specify PuppetDB instances to which commands should be sent, but which shouldn’t ever be queried for data needed during a Puppet run. It uses the same format as server_urls. For example:

submit_only_server_urls =

If a server is listed in submit_only_server_urls, it shouldn’t be listed in server_urls; the two lists should be disjoint.

Successful command submission to the PuppetDB instances in this list do count towards the min_successful_submissions setting, so consider incrementing accordingly if you use this setting.


The server_url_timeout setting sets the maximum amount of time (in seconds) the PuppetDB-termini will wait for PuppetDB to respond to HTTP requests. If the user has specified multiple PuppetDB URLs and a timeout has occurred, it will attempt the same request on the next server in the list.

The default value is 30 seconds.


This setting can let the Puppet master stay partially available during a PuppetDB outage. If set to true, Puppet will keep compiling and serving catalogs even if PuppetDB isn’t accessible for command submission. (However, any catalogs that need to query exported resources from PuppetDB will still fail.)

The default value is false.

include_unchanged_resources (PE only)

Warning: This setting is intended for use only in Puppet Enterprise (PE). Using this setting without a PE PuppetDB package will only result in degraded PuppetDB performance, and PuppetDB will not store the unchanged resources data.

This setting tells the PuppetDB terminus whether or not it should include unchanged resources data in a report when sending it to PuppetDB. If you do not want to store information about unchanged resources in a report, set this value to false.

The default value in PE is true.


Note: For use with Puppet Enterprise only.

When using multiple server_urls, this flag can be set to true to cause queries to be made to the last PuppetDB instance that was successfully contacted.

The default value is false.


Note: For use with Puppet Enterprise only.

When set to true in installations using multiple server_urls, commands are sent to all configured PuppetDB instances.

In open source Puppet and PE versions earlier than 2016.5, the default setting is false. In PE 2016.5 and later, the default setting is true.


Note: For use with Puppet Enterprise only.

When writing data (submitting commands) to PuppetDB, this is the minimum number of machines to which the command must be successfully sent to consider the write successful. If the configured number of machines cannot be reached, Puppet runs will fail.

The default value is one, which should be appropriate for most single- or dual-PuppetDB deployments.

This setting must be used in conjunction with command_broadcast.

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