Chef

Turn your infrastructure into code

References:

Basic Concept

Cookbook –> project configuration

Workstation –> your local where you setup/manage cookbook

  • Check DK Development Kit
  • Chef-Repo Working directory contains Cookbooks, Roles, Data bags, environments, etc.
  • Chef tool to manage cookbook
  • Knife tool to communicate with ChefServer

Chef Server –> a hub for a configuration data

Nodes –> machines that are managed/configurated by Chef

  • ChefClient run the automation on node
  • Ohai collect system configuration data

Berkshelf: dependency manager

Chef-Repo

Chef Repo Doc

Directory structure

  • .chef validation key files and knife.rb
  • cookbooks
  • data_bags global variable
  • environments
  • roles

knife.rb Doc

knife.rb -> configuration details for knife

  • Is loaded every time this executable is run
  • Is not created by default
  • Default path: .chef/chef.rb

cookbooks folder can be added to .gitignore

Setup Workstation

Official docs

  1. Install Chef DK
  2. Create or Clone chef repo git clone CHEF_REPO
  3. ssh to chef server
  4. (If not exist) Create organization . This step will generate ORG_NAME.pem 
    chef-server-ctl org-create ORG_NAME ORG_FULL_NAME -f FILE_NAME
  5. Create user. This step will generate USERNAME.pem 
    chef-server-ctl user-create USER_NAME FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL PASSWORD -f FILE_NAME
  6. Add user to organization 
    sudo chef-server-ctl org-user-add ORG_NAME USER_NAME
  7. Exit from chef serve (back to your workstation)
  8. Change directory to chef repo cd CHEF_REPO
  9. Create .chef directory mkdir .chef
  10. Move ORG_NAME.pem and USERNAME.pem to .chef directory
  11. Setup your knife.rb 
    current_dir = File.dirname(__FILE__)
log_level                :info
log_location             STDOUT
node_name                'node_name'
client_key               "#{current_dir}/USER.pem"
validation_client_name   'ORG_NAME-validator'
validation_key           "#{current_dir}/ORGANIZATION-validator.pem"
chef_server_url          'https://api.chef.io/organizations/ORG_NAME'
cache_type               'BasicFile'
cache_options( :path => "#{ENV['HOME']}/.chef/checksums" )
cookbook_path            ["#{current_dir}/../cookbooks"]
  12. Get SSL Certificate knife ssl fetch
  13. Test knife client list

Setup Node

  1. Change directory to chef repo.
  2. Install chef-client to target system by bootstrapping. 
     # plain
 knife bootstrap FQDN_or_IP_ADDRESS

 # with some option
 knife bootstrap FQDN_or_IP_ADDRESS -i PEM_FILE  -E ENVIRONMENT -N NOTE -r RECIPE --bootstrap-version VERSION -x USER --sudo
  3. Run chef-client on each machine. Shortcut way to using knife ssh 
     # run chef-client on NODE
 knife ssh 'name:NODE' 'sudo chef-client'

 # run chef-client on all NODE
 knife ssh 'name:*' 'sudo chef-client'

 # run chef-client  on all of the web servers running Ubuntu on the Amazon EC2 platform
 knife ssh "role:web" "sudo chef-client" -x ubuntu -a ec2.public_hostname

 # upgrade all nodes
 knife ssh name:* "sudo aptitude upgrade -y"

chef-client Document

Undo bootstrapping

knife node delete --yes NODENAME
knife client delete --yes NODENAME

Cookbooks

Structure

  • Attributes details of node
  • Recipes
  • metadata.rb

Test your cookbook using kitchen-test

Some knife command

# new cookbook
chef generate cookbook NAME

# upload cookbook
knife cookbook upload NAME

# list of cookbook
knife cookbook list

Misc

Stacktrace for chef solo ~/chef-solo/local-mode-cache/cache/chef-stacktrace.out