This document discusses using Chef for configuration management. Chef allows managing servers by writing code rather than running commands. It integrates tightly with applications, databases, and other systems. With Chef, infrastructure can be configured and provisioned in a code-driven, repeatable way. The document outlines getting started with Chef, including using a hosted Chef server, installing a local server, and key Chef concepts like recipes, cookbooks, and nodes. It concludes with demonstrating how to provision and configure a full Ubuntu server on Amazon with firewall, users, LAMP stack, and WordPress in about 5 minutes using Chef.

1. CONFIGURATION
MANAGEMENT WITH CHEF
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
Charles Johnson

2. WHO’S THIS GUY?
• Systems Engineer
• Operations Junkie
• Currently managing hundreds of nodes across multiple data
centers, cloud providers, and projects with Chef
• Not a Rubyist
• @mr_chip

3. SYSTEMS IS A HARD PROBLEM.
• Provisioning! • Tools!
• Authentication! • Mail!
• Monitoring! • SSH Keys!
• Security! • Quality Assurance!
• Networking! • Users!
• Neckbeards!

4. SYSTEMS IS A PROBLEM THAT
DOESN’T STAY SOLVED.
• OS vendors and applications are constantly patching. VM
Templates / snapshots / AMI images / shell scripts are out of
date as soon as they’re created.
• Errors
are duplicated by copying & pasting running virtual
machines.
• Horizontal scaling introduces heterogenous clusters.
• Noversioning, unit testing, build automation, or release
controls.

5. SO MANY CHOICES

6. SO MANY CHOICES
Ubuntu
Zenoss sftp
resolv.conf
Rackspacemysql
Apache zmq
chroot Sudo emacs monit i386
membase PECL
Sendmailapt AMI DNS Jetty samba
PEAR nfsCentOS Debiansyslog
mongodb Ruby hbase
SOLR
fdisk IIS bluepill VMWare Windows
iptables VPN
runit rabitmq init PHP-FPM
x86_64 Gems Postfix Python /dev/sda
smb
ldap screen selinux yum Munin god vi
Tomcat
splunk Terramarkupstart afp PHP git
lvm nginx Redhat AppArmor
eth0 Amazon memcached
lighttpd Perl ufw /etc/hosts
bash nagios
zookeeper svn
Openstack
tmux riak Passenger

12. THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER
WAY.

13. CONFIGURATION
MANAGEMENT

14. SPECIFICALLY, CHEF.
• Manage your servers by
writing code, not by running
commands.
• Integratetightly with your
applications, databases,
LDAP directories, and more.
• Automatically Configure
infrastructure-aware
applications

15. EVERYTHING IS CODE.
• Instance Provisioning • code
• User administration • code
• Database installation • code
• Application Installation • code
• Services Configuration • code
• Networking • code

16. INFRASTRUCTURE AS CODE
• Testable
• Versioned
• Repeatable
• Scalable

17. GETTING STARTED WITH
CHEF
• Chef is inherently client-server
• Weak Server / Strong Client - Server provides repository and
security, client interprets and executes policy
• Hosted: Manage 5 nodes free - Opscode.com
• Install your own Chef Server via gem or apt
• Chef is Ruby. Drop Ruby blocks into your recipes and they’ll
just work.

18. INTERFACING WITH CHEF
• knife - Chef command-line
tool
• shef - Like irb for Chef.
• Cookbooks-
Cookbooks.opscode.com
• Repo - Github / SVN
• WebUI -
manage.opscode.com

19. WHAT YOU’LL NEED
• Hosted Chef Account - http://manage.opsource.com
• Cloud Provider account - AWS / Rackspace
• Github account or other repo
• Configured Chef Workstation (gem install chef)
• Some cookbooks - http://cookbooks.opscode.com

20. CHEF CORE CONCEPTS
• chef-server • attributes
• chef repo • recipes
• clients • cookbooks
• nodes • providers
• environments • definitions
• roles

21. DEMO TIME
Provision, Configure, and build
a full Ubuntu server with
firewall, user accounts, LAMP
stack, and Wordpress at
Amazon in (about) 5 minutes.