Define a configuration policy

Here you will learn to define a configuration policy through Rudder’s technique editor. A technique is a configuration policy template, that will need to be instantiated afterwards.

First, go to the Technique Editor in Configuration policy → Techniques. A configuration policy in Rudder is called a technique.

You may have expected to start writing configuration code at this point. We won’t! (though it is also perfectly possible, but not the purpose of this guide).

Let’s define a very simple policy: create a demo user. We will first create a new technique by clicking on Create Technique.

We can now name our technique: Demo user, and add a small description for documentation:

How does this interface work?

The methods will be the building blocks to our technique. You can think of them as small bricks you will assemble into a technique. Let’s start the configuration, click on the User category (in the lower right of the interface), and click on the User present method. It is now part of our technique’s component list, with an orange warning asking for parameters. To provide them, click on the method instance in the technique.

The right column will change from method list to method configuration:

We have defined a first policy! Let’s add a second method: click on Add methods in the lower left of the technique details, to display the list of available methods, and navigate to the User category. Let’s add a user description, with the User fullname method:

We now have specified one characteristic of our user.

Let’s save this technique! (with the Save button). We now have a configuration policy we can apply yo our machines.