slides.md

Teaching Chef

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Chef

[email protected]

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The Framework

Chef vs Chef-Solo

• Chef-Solo runs on the local machine and requires dependencies to be on that machine
• Chef has a server and nodes
  • the server contains dependencies and instructions
  • the node communicates with the server to configure itself

I don't know much about Chef-Solo.

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The Framework

Chef Server

• stores data needed for the chef run (more on this later)
• has a web UI
• indexes data about nodes for searching

Two options:

Hosted Chef

• pay OpsWorks to provide the Chef server
• support

Open Source Chef

• build your own server
• no support, but also no boundaries

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The Guts

Basically two components: the Chef Repo and Cookbooks

Chef Repo

• analogous to a rails app; it's the driver of your infrastructure
  • knife gem for operating on the chef server
  • cucumber-chef gem for BDD

Cookbooks

• analogous to a gem, but more integral
  • contains the code necessary to accomplish some specific goal (e.g. install monit, or update the apt-cache)

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Initial setup

1. Init the chef-repo

• https://github.com/opscode/chef-repo

2. Set up the chef server

• http://docs.opscode.com/install_server.html

3. Connect your chef repository to the server

• http://docs.opscode.com/chef/install_workstation.html

4. Make your first cookbook

• TDD it using ChefSpec

5. Use it in your chef-repo

• Gems like Librarian-Chef and Berkshelf (both are like Bundler) are useful for managing cookbooks
• BDD it using Cucumber-Chef
  • Runs code against an actual server (EC2 or Vagrant)

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Initial setup - continued

6. Run it on a node

• Use Knife-EC2 to launch nodes
• Run the chef-client. Two options:
  • ssh onto the target machine
    • chef-repo $ knife node show NODE_NAME
    • chef-repo $ ssh user@ip
    • chef-node $ chef-client
  • use knife ssh
    • bundle exec knife ssh 'name:NODE_NAME' 'chef-client'
      • useful switches:
        • -i /path/to/chef.pem
        • -x root run as root user (default is ubuntu)

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Anatomy of a Chef Repo

• chef-repo/
  • config/
    • rake.rb
  • cookbooks/
  • data_bags/
  • environments/
  • roles/
  • Rakefile
  • chefignore
  • README.md

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Anatomy of a Chef Repo

My additions:

• chef-repo/
  • ...
  • features/
    • step_definitions/
    • support/
      • environments/
        • test.rb
      • env.rb
  • lib/
    • tasks/
  • Cheffile
  • Cheffile.lock
  • Gemfile
  • Gemfile.lock

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Anatomy of a Chef Cookbook

• my_cookbook/
  • attributes/
    • default.rb
  • definitions/
  • files/
    • default/
  • libraries/
  • providers/
  • recipes/
    • default.rb
  • resources/
  • templates/
  • metadata.rb
  • README.md

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Anatomy of a Chef Cookbook

My additions:

• my_cookbook/
  • ...
  • spec/
    • spec_helper.rb
    • default_spec.rb
  • Cheffile
  • Cheffile.lock
  • Gemfile
  • Gemfile.lock