Static catalogs

A catalog is a document that describes the desired state for each resource that Puppet manages on a node. Puppet Enterprise (PE) primary servers typically compile catalogs from manifests of Puppet code. A static catalog is a specific type of Puppet catalog that includes metadata specifying the desired state of any file resources containing source attributes pointing to puppet:/// locations on a node.

The metadata in a static catalog can refer to a specific version of a file (other than the latest version), and it can confirm that the agent is applying the desired version of the file resource for the catalog. Including this metadata in the catalog reduces the number of requests agents make to the primary server.

Go to the Puppet documentation for details about Resources, File types, and Catalog compilation.