Chef Essentials Workshop - Official Chef Training

Course Outline

1. Chef Introduction

• Overview and expectations for the class
• The Chef Lab System Architecture
  • Group lab: Pre-built workstation

2. Using Chef Resources

• Using Chef to install packages on your virtual workstation
• Using the chef-client command
• Creating a basic Chef recipe file
• Defining Chef Resources
• Test and repair
  • Lab: The 'file' resource

3. Building Cookbooks

• Modify a recipe
• Collaboration and version control
• Generating a Chef cookbook
• Defining a Chef recipe that sets up a web server
  • Group exercise: Version Control
  • Lab: Set up Git
  • Lab: Setting up web servers

4. Chef client

• Locally applying multiple cookbooks' recipes with chef-client
• Applying a run list
• Including a recipe from within another recipe
  • Lab: Update the apache Cookbook

5. Testing Cookbooks

• Using Test Kitchen to verify your recipes converge on a virtual instance
• Reading the ServerSpec documentation
• Writing and execute tests
• Where do tests live?
  • Group exercise: Test configuration
  • Lab: Converge the kitchen
  • Lab: Commit your work
  • Lab: Testing Apache

6. Details About a System

• Managing large numbers of servers
• Capturing details about a system
• Using the node object within a recipe
• Using Ruby's string interpolation
• Updating the version of a cookbook
  • Lab: Update the Cookbook version
  • Lab: Node Details in the Webserver
  • Lab: Commit your work

7. Desired State and Data

• Cleaner recipes
• When to use a template resource
• Creating a template file
• Using ERB tags to display node data in a template
• Defininge a template resource
• Using kitchen test on the "apache" cookbook
• Using chef-clientto apply the "apache" cookbook's "default" recipe
• Updating the "apache" cookbook's version for this patch=
• Committing the changes
  • Lab: Update the version

8. Local Workstation Installation

• Installing ChefDK on your laptop
• Executing commands to ensure everything is installed
• Installing a local editor like Atom
  • Lab: You will run the following commands and report their versions: $chef, $chef-client, $knife, $ohai, $berks, $kitchen, $foodcritic, $rubocop

9. The Chef Server

• Connecting to a Chef Server
• Managing Additional systems
• Managing User traffic
• Uploading cookbooks to a Chef Server
• Bootstrapping a node
• Managing a node via a Chef Server
• Hosted Chef
  • Lab: Uploading cookbooks and managing cookbook dependencies

10. Community Cookbooks

• Find cookbooks on the Chef supermarket
• Create a wrapper cookbook
• Example: load balancer
• Amazon EC2 instances
• Replace the existing default values
• Upload a cookbook to Chef Server
• Bootstrap a new node that runs the cookbook
  • Discussion: Can your teams benefit from the supermarket?

11. Managing Multiple Nodes

• Managing user traffic
• Bootstrapping and updating the run_list
• Running chef-client on a node
• Appending values to an attribute within a recipe
• Versioning cookbooks and uploading to Chef Server
  • Lab: Another new node
  • Lab: Test and update the load balancer
  • Lab: Run $berks install
  • Lab: Converging the cookbook

12. Roles

• Assigning, defining, and configuring
• The 'knife' role
• Verifying roles
• Roles for everyone
  • Lab: Define a web role

13. Search

• Update a Cookbook to Dynamically Use Nodes with the Web Role
• Describe the query syntax used in search
• Build a search into your recipe code
• Create a Ruby Array and Ruby Hash
• Update the myhaproxy wrapper cookbook
  • Lab: Updating, load balancing, uploading and running the new search-capable cookbook

14. Environments

• Keeping your infrastructure current
• Creating a production environment
• Creating an acceptance environment
• Deploying a node to an environment
• Updating a search query to be more exact
  • Lab: Set new nodes to production
  • Lab: Acceptance environment
  • Lab: Create a new environment file 

15. Course wrap and further resources

• Beyond essentials
• Valuable reading
• Events and online resources
• Customizing Chef