[chef] Chef on Amazon EC2 with auto-scaling

[Oliver Beattie < >]

Hi there,

I'm very interested in using Chef for deployment of our web services on Amazon EC2, and was looking if someone could help me out with some advice.

I've been trying my best to read through the existing information that's out there, but I'm just coming up very confused. Basically, the desired setup I want to achieve is as so:-

* Use Amazon auto-scaling to automatically bring up new instances as the load requires

* The servers automatically configure themselves with services via Chef

Is this something that's actually possible with using Chef? From what I see, it is possible, but I don't really see any information on the real mechanics of this, especially with regard to how one manages these servers once they have been brought up. Are they manageable using Knife (even though they weren't launched using it?)

If anyone could point me in the direction of some more information, I'd be most grateful.

Thanks,

Oliver Beattie