Running Puppet agent on demand

Some sites prefer to run Puppet agent on demand, and others occasionally need to do an on-demand run.

You can start Puppet agent runs while logged in to the target system, or remotely with Bolt or MCollective.

While logged in to the target system

On Windows, log in as an administrator, and start the configuration run by selecting Start -> Run Puppet Agent. If Windows prompts for User Account Control confirmation, click Yes. The status result of the run is shown in a command prompt window.

Running other Puppet commands

To run other Puppet-related commands, start a command prompt with administrative privileges. You can do so by right-clicking the Command Prompt or Start Command Prompts with Puppet program and clicking Run as administrator. Click Yes if the system asks for UAC confirmation.

Remotely

Open source Puppet users can use Bolt to run tasks and commands on remote systems.

Alternatively, you can install MCollective and the puppet agent plugin to get similar capabilities, but Puppet doesn't provide standalone MCollective packages for Windows.

As of Puppet agent 5.5.4, MCollective is deprecated and will be removed in a future version of Puppet agent. If you use Puppet Enterprise, consider migrating from MCollective to Puppet orchestrator. If you use open source Puppet, migrate MCollective agents and filters using tools like Bolt and the PuppetDB Puppet Query Language.