title: Puppet splay & splaylimit explained?
body: <p>I'm looking for someone to explain the usage of splay &amp; splaylimit within Puppet configuration.</p>
  
  <p>The documentation on the Puppet site itself is limited to say the least.
  I am suffering from thundering herd on my master, i.e. a number of agents hammering the agent for their catalog all at once, to the point where the master falls over, and each agent reports a timeout error.</p>
  
  <p>I know I need to use the splay &amp; splaylimit options in my config to stop all agents checking in at once, but I'm unsure of how to implement it.
  Can anyone assist please?</p>