[chef] Re: Re: Chef-client as a cron, or as a service, which cookbook?

[KC Braunschweig < >]

On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 12:00 AM, Bryan McLellan 
<
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 wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 11:42 PM, Tim Diggins 
> <
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>  wrote:
>> Is there a strong reason for running chef-client as a service rather than a
>> cron?

> in a run, it runs again when finished. If you were running in cron, it
> is up to you to manage locking so multiple chef-clients do not run at
> once.

Note the client daemon implements splay in addition to an interval
between chef runs to reduce the thundering herd effect on the server.
If you go the cron route, you'll want to mimic this behavior as well.
I'd say just use the daemon unless it somehow consumes a non-trivial
amount of system resources while sleeping, and even then, just log
that as a bug.

I dunno if anyone's had to do this with Chef but in the Puppet world
the folks I know that stopped using the daemon did so only because
they needed to switch to centrally orchestrated runs (via
mCollective).

KC