I would love to get into it more deeply as you continue to supply details! :)
distributing hardware outside of your network and using puppet in master/client mode is obviously a bad idea, just like having any dependency is difficult to manage (sometimes like NTP)
However, clocks will drift. Consider ntpdate in a cron or an easier-to-manage sntp client vs ntpd, which is a little nutty.
So the point is that a tool like puppet, only properly configured, is probably a great asset for your use case of distributing hardware, as it can help keep things working as expected.
Yes Puppet solved one problem... How do I add a cron to all devices, and retry it if it failed without adding it twice to devices where it worked. Puppet is amazing. It solved that problem....
But then it created a whole new world of problems since it violated our business model to have it phone home. Thanks for the suggestions on NTP. We'll likely add features that do require more accurate time in the future & your suggestions will probably come in handy!
distributing hardware outside of your network and using puppet in master/client mode is obviously a bad idea, just like having any dependency is difficult to manage (sometimes like NTP)
However, clocks will drift. Consider ntpdate in a cron or an easier-to-manage sntp client vs ntpd, which is a little nutty.
So the point is that a tool like puppet, only properly configured, is probably a great asset for your use case of distributing hardware, as it can help keep things working as expected.