How come data is not coming from my hiera yaml file?

I am using Puppet Enterprise 3.7.2 and on one of my nodes I create the file:

[root@vii-osc4-mgmt-001 ~]# cat /etc/profile.d/POD_prefix.sh 
export FACTER_pod_prefix=vii-osc4

Then I rebooted that node and logged back in and verified that the FACTER_pod_prefix gets set and facter pod_prefix outputs the expected value.

[root@vii-osc4-mgmt-001 ~]# env | grep FACTER_pod_prefix
FACTER_pod_prefix=vii-osc4
[root@vii-osc4-mgmt-001 ~]# facter pod_prefix
vii-osc4

On my PE 3.7 Puppet master I created the file /var/lib/hiera/vii-osc4.yaml. I created the /var/lib/hiera/vii-osc4.yaml from the /var/lib/hiera/defaults.yaml file that I had been using like so:

# cp /var/lib/hiera/defaults.yaml /var/lib/hiera/vii-osc4.yaml

This file has a bunch of class parameter values. For example there is this line in the file:

controller_vip_name: vii-osc4.example.com

Then I changed my hiera.yaml file to look like this:

[root@osc4-ppt-001 ~]# cat /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/hiera.yaml
---
:backends:
  - yaml
:hierarchy:
  - "%{pod_prefix}"
  - defaults
  - "%{clientcert}"
  - "%{environment}"
  - global

:yaml:
# datadir is empty here, so hiera uses its defaults:
# - /var/lib/hiera on *nix
# - %CommonAppData%\PuppetLabs\hiera\var on Windows
# When specifying a datadir, make sure the directory exists.
  :datadir:

Then I restarted my pe-httpd service like so (RHEL7):

# systemctl restart pe-httpd

Then I make a small change to the /var/lib/hiera/vii-osc4.yaml for example I change the line ...

controller_vip_name: vii-osc4.example.com

... to ...

controller_vip_name: VII-osc4.example.com

But when I run puppet agent -t --noop on my node, vii-osc4-mgmt-001, I do not see the change that I expected to see. If I make the change in the /var/lib/hiera/defaults.yaml and then run puppet agent -t --noop on my node I do see the expected changes. What am I doing wrong here?

UPDATE: using /etc/facter/facts.d method of setting custom facts.

I looked into using /etc/facter/facts.d for what I am trying to do. What I am trying to do is set a custom fact "pod_prefix". I want to use this fact in my hiera.yaml like so ...

---
:backends:
  - yaml
:hierarchy:
  - "%{::pod_prefix}"
  - defaults
  - "%{clientcert}"
  - "%{environment}"
  - global

:yaml:
# datadir is empty here, so hiera uses its defaults:
# - /var/lib/hiera on *nix
# - %CommonAppData%\PuppetLabs\hiera\var on Windows
# When specifying a datadir, make sure the directory exists.
  :datadir:

... so that nodes that have pod_prefix set to vii-osc4 will obtain their class parameters from the file /var/lib/hiera/vii-osc4/yaml and host that pod_prefix set to ix-xyz will get their class params from /var/lib/hiera/ix-xyz.yaml. I do not see how creating the file /etc/facter/facts.d/pod_prefix.txt on my puppet master that contains something like this ...

# cat pod_prefix.txt 
pod_prefix=vii-osc4

... could possibly be a solution to my problem. I guess I must be misunderstanding something here. Can someone help?

UPDATE 2.

The /etc/facter/facts.d/pod_prefix.txt file goes on my nodes. I think my biggest problem is that just execute systemctl restart pe-httpd was not sufficient and things didn't start working until I did a full reboot of my puppet master. I need to go look at the docs and figure out what is the correct way to restart the "puppet master".

Solution

The very approach of managing custom facts through environment variables is quite brittle. In this case, I suspect it does not work because you changed the environment of login shells via /etc/profile.d. System services don't run in such shells, though.

A clean approach would be to define your fact value in /etc/facter/facts.d instead.