Is there still space in AI and Cloud native days, for a new tool to manage classic infrastructures, basic on physical or virtual servers?
If you handle good old servers, and use Puppet, Bolt or Ansible to configure and manage them, then the answer might be yes, and we may have a nice tool for you.
Pabawi is a new, moderm, sleek web frontend to inventory your systems, check they configuration management status, and run actions on them.
Version 0.4.0, just released after a few weeks of AI based coding, has integrations with Bolt, Hiera, PuppetDB and PuppetServer.
Current version is expected to be run by a Puppet developer / user on her/his localhost, featuring:
- Multi-Source Inventory: View and manage nodes from Bolt inventory and PuppetDB
- Command Execution: Run ad-hoc commands on remote nodes with whitelist security
- Task Execution: Execute Bolt tasks with automatic parameter support
- Puppet Integration: Trigger Puppet agent runs with full configuration control
- Package Management: Install and manage packages across your infrastructure
- Execution History: Track all operations with detailed results and re-execution capability
- Dynamic Inventory: Automatically discover nodes from PuppetDB
- Node Facts: View comprehensive system information from Puppet agents
- Puppet Reports: Browse detailed Puppet run reports with metrics and resource changes
- Catalog Inspection: Examine compiled Puppet catalogs and resource relationships
- Event Tracking: Monitor individual resource changes and failures over time
- PQL Queries: Filter nodes using PuppetDB Query Language
- Hiera Data Browser: Explore hierarchical configuration data and key usage analysis
- Puppet code analysys: Analyses Puppet code base, reporting class usage, lint issues, outdated modules in Puppetfile
Ansible and other tools integrations are planned for future versions.
Check the git repopsitory for installation instructions and details.
Screenshots
Here some screenshots, from a test setup with few nodes. The interface adapts well and is still fast on larger setups (currently tested with infrastructures up to 350 nodes).
Nodes Inventory

Node inventory with multi-source support, blazing fast search and filtering options
Task Execution

Bolt task execution interface with automatic parameters discovery
Executions Tracking

Execution history with filtering and detailed execution results with re-run capabilities
Node Details

Node detail page with access to facts, reports, events, managed resources and other useful info
Puppet reports

Puppet reports view, with run times and number of affected resource.
Free installation service
Pabawi is easy to integrate in your existing Puppet / Bolt infrastructure and has contextual setup instructions for each integration, but if you want help in trying it in your infrastructure, example42 offers a launch special, time limited, free installation service, no strings attached.
In a shared screen call we can setup Pabawi with you, either using its container image or via npm.
We want to test and validate it in different conditions, collecting users feedback and suggestions.
Just contact me on LinkedIN for planning a call: half an hour should be enought to set it up and see how it works.
Alessandro Franceschi
