Chef Essentials -- Table of Contents -- Chef Essentials -- Credits -- About the Author -- About the Reviewers -- www.PacktPub.com -- Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more -- Why Subscribe? -- Free Access for Packt account holders -- Preface -- What this book covers -- What you need for this book -- Who this book is for -- Conventions -- Reader feedback -- Customer support -- Errata -- Piracy -- Questions -- 1. Installing Chef -- Terminology -- Working with Chef -- Installing chef-solo -- The Ruby gem -- Managing gems -- Verifying that chef-solo works -- Installing a Chef server -- Requirements and recent changes -- Installation requirements -- What you will be installing -- Getting the installer -- Installation outline -- Installing on Ubuntu -- Downloading the package -- Installing the package -- Installing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux -- Downloading the package -- Configuring a Chef server -- Understanding how chef-server-ctl works -- What's happening on my server? -- Verifying that the services are running -- Validating that your service is working -- Ensuring that your knife configuration works -- Summary -- 2. Modeling Your Infrastructure -- Getting to know Chef -- Modeling your infrastructure -- Roles -- Defining roles -- A web application service role -- An image-processing role -- An image search role -- A PostgreSQL service role -- A Solr service role -- An OpenSSH service role -- Implementing a role -- Determining which recipes you need -- Installing a cookbook -- Applying recipes to roles -- Mapping your roles to nodes -- Converging a node -- Environments -- Organizing your configuration data -- Example attribute data -- Data bags -- Knowing when to use data bags -- Large-scale infrastructure -- Summary -- 3. Integrating with the Cloud -- Leveraging the cloud -- Amazon EC2 -- Installing the EC2 knife plugin.

Setting up EC2 authentication -- Provisioning an instance -- Bootstrapping the instance -- Terminating the instance -- Removing the Chef node -- Rackspace Cloud -- Provisioning an instance -- Terminating an instance -- Removing the Chef node -- Summary -- 4. Working with Cookbooks -- Attributes -- Multiple attribute files -- Supporting multiple platforms -- Loading external attributes -- Using attributes -- Metadata -- Recipes -- Resources -- Using resources -- Overriding a default behavior -- Templates -- Why use templates? -- A quick ERB primer -- Executing Ruby -- Variable replacement -- The template resource -- The template variables -- Passing variables to a template -- Accessing computed configurations -- Searching for templates -- Definitions -- Recipes -- Developing recipes -- Writing recipes -- Starting out small -- Installing a simple service -- Getting more advanced -- Summary -- 5. Testing Your Recipes -- Testing recipes -- RSpec -- RSpec and ChefSpec -- Testing basics -- Comparing RSpec with other testing libraries -- Using ChefSpec -- Getting started with ChefSpec -- Installing ChefSpec -- Locking your dependencies in Ruby -- Creating a simple recipe and a matching ChefSpec test -- Writing a ChefSpec test -- Building your recipe -- Executing tests -- Understanding failures -- Expanding your tests -- Multiple examples in a spec test -- Testing for multiple platforms -- Summary -- 6. From Development to Deployment -- Describing the setup -- Deploying software with Chef -- Configuring your local environment -- Modeling a simple Python application -- Managing the cookbooks -- Downloading cookbooks -- Looking at the database recipe -- Looking at your application deployment cookbook -- Preparing the directories -- Constructing your Python virtual environment -- Checking the source code -- Installing any extra dependencies.

Managing dependencies in Chef -- Managing dependencies elsewhere -- Using Python's requirements file -- Configuring your application -- Keeping your application running -- Defining roles -- Creating the base server role -- Creating the database server role -- Creating the web server role -- Adding users -- Provisioning EC2 instances -- Configuring the database host -- Configuring the web server -- Deploying your software -- Manually deploying updates -- Automating deployment -- Summary -- 7. Beyond Basic Recipes and Cookbooks -- Managing users -- Evolution of a shell user recipe -- Storing data in data bags -- Creating a data bag for users -- Searching for data -- Searching inside recipes -- Enhancing your user cookbook -- Distributing SSH keys -- Templating the authorized keys -- Adding deployment keys -- Writing custom extensions -- Developing a custom definition -- Organizing your code -- Writing a definition for using PIP -- Defining a full application template -- Building a resource -- Defining the resource -- Implementing the provider -- Modifying resources -- Loading an existing resource -- Declaring that a resource was updated -- Working with data bags -- Securing your data bags -- Secret keys -- Encrypting your data -- Decrypting your data -- Storing keys on nodes -- Searching your data -- Searching your data bags with knife -- Searching your data bags from a recipe -- Querying your data -- Managing multiple machines with search queries -- Summary -- 8. Extras You Need to Know -- Vagrant and Chef-solo -- Installing Vagrant -- Provisioning a new host with Vagrant -- Booting your Vagrant image -- Combining Vagrant with Chef-solo -- Understanding the limitations of Chef-solo -- Configuring Chef-solo -- Telling Chef-solo what to run -- Using roles and data bags with Chef-solo -- Injecting custom JSON data -- Providing a custom node name.

Getting to know the Chef shell -- Using the Chef shell -- The standalone mode -- The solo mode -- The client mode -- Interacting with the Chef server using the shell -- Interacting with data -- Searching your data -- Editing your data -- Transforming data -- Executing recipes with Chef shell -- Creating a recipe in the shell -- Defining node attributes -- Setting attributes -- Accessing attributes -- Using configuration blocks -- Interactively executing recipes -- Debugging with the Chef shell -- Using the breakpoint resource -- Integration testing -- Using Test Kitchen -- Installing Test Kitchen -- Testing with Test Kitchen -- Building a simple cookbook -- Preparing your cookbook for the kitchen -- Testing your new cookbook -- Provisioning the instance -- Converging the newly created instance -- Writing a simple test -- Combining all the steps -- Extending Chef -- Writing an Ohai plugin -- A note about writing Ohai plugins -- Chef with Capistrano -- Automation and integration -- Automated updates and deployments -- Summary -- Index.