chef-provisioning-examples

Set of examples to start gradually with Chef Provisioning

Requirements

• Ruby installed (tested with version 2.1.5)
• ChefDK (tested with version 0.3.5) => following problems triggered by a bug related to a minor patch update of net-ssh, we are not installing ChefDK on the development system with the provided installers but reverting back to using Bundler, with the required gems declared and locked.
• Vagrant installed (tested with version 1.6.5)
• VirtualBox installed (tested with version 4.3.10)

This was all tested (Vagrant and AWS setups) on OS X Yosemite (10.10.1). I also tested the AWS setup from an Ubuntu precise64 vm using Vagrant on my mac.

Finishing the setup for your development environnement

Since we are now using Bundler, it means that you will have to run the following before starting experimenting with these examples:

$ bundle install

Setup for Vagrant usage

... Nothing else to do. You already have installed what is needed through the requirements.

Setup for AWS usage

Note: machine creation on AWS will not work is the ssh port is not open: see Launch the examples with AWS setup section.

AWS credentials

Added AWS credentials in ~/.aws as per http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-getting-started.html#cli-config-files but putting everything in the ~/.aws/config file.

In my case :

[default]
region = eu-west-1a
aws_access_key_id=your_key
aws_secret_access_key=your_other_key

For more info, Chef doc at https://github.com/opscode/chef-provisioning/blob/master/docs/blogs/2012-05-22-new-driver-interface.html.markdown#using-metal-today-aws)

AWS private Key

You have to set the name of your private key in the AWS_KEYPAIR_NAME environment variable so it can be used in aws_setup.rb:

$ export AWS_KEYPAIR_NAME=my_aws_key

Here is the documented info on where to place your private key

Personally, I have placed my_aws_key.pem in ~/.chef/keys/

Before you can launch the examples

Get the cookbooks with Berkshelf

For any recipe other than simplest_machine.rb, you will need to upload the cookbooks your recipes are depending on to Chef Zero so it can find them. "Uploading" in the case of Chef Zero simply means having Berkshelf resolving the cookbooks that are listed in the Berksfile file and copying them to ./cookbooks/.

You can do this either by using Rake:

$ bundle exec rake upload

or by directly calling Berkshelf:

$ bundle exec berks vendor cookbooks

Note that when using Rake to subsequently run recipes (as instructed further down), the upload task will always be called within the recipes tasks when they depend on cookbooks.

Set the Key Pair to your own

This is done by putting your own key pair name in the :key_name option in the aws_setup.rb file.

Launch the examples with the Vagrant setup

You can launch the examples either by using the Rake tasks or by calling the chef-client.

Simplest machine

$ bundle exec rake vagrant_simplest

or

$ bundle exec chef-client -z vagrant_setup.rb simplest_machine.rb

Single machine with converging cookbooks

$ bundle exec rake vagrant_single

or

$ bundle exec berks vendor cookbooks
$ bundle exec chef-client -z vagrant_setup.rb single_machine_converging.rb

Any other recipe

$ bundle exec berks vendor cookbooks
$ bundle exec chef-client -z vagrant_setup.rb whatever_new_recipe.rb

Destroying the converged machines

Converged machine can be destroy as follows:

$ bundle exec rake vagrant_destroy

or

$ bundle exec chef-client -z vagrant_setup.rb destroy_all.rb

Launch the examples with the AWS setup

Note: Make sure that your default security group opens up the ssd port (22) to the outside, otherwise Chef Provisioning will not be able to connect to it. See issue #3 for more details.

Same as for the Vagrant setup by just replacing vagrant with aws for the Rake tasks, or vagrant_setup.rb with aws_setup.rb when called with Chef Client.

For instance:

$ bundle exec rake aws_simplest

or

$ bundle exec berks vendor cookbooks
$ bundle exec chef-client -z aws_setup.rb simplest_machine.rb

Continuous Integration

To read more about how continuous integration has been set up on Travis, read the TESTING.md file.

TO DO

• Explain what happened:
  • nodes directory created
  • clients directory created
  • local-mode-cache and vms directories created in .chef/ (and not ~/.chef/ since we are using the .chef/knife.rb file)
• Explain why using a .chef/knife.rb file where it could be skipped