[chef] Re: chef-solo and different server configs

[Hector Castro < >]

Hi Jesse,

In my specific case the dependencies of chef-server make it a tough sell – 
especially since I'm just starting to get Chef in the door and there isn't a 
ton of adoption.  Absolutely no disrespect to Chef's capabilities intended.

--
Hector

On Nov 19, 2011, at 2:10 PM, Jesse Robbins wrote:

> Out of curiosity, why use solo for this rather than hosted chef or 
> chef-server?  I want to better understand your use cases.  (It seems like 
> you may be doing a lot of work to do things that Chef exists to do and does 
> well.)
> 
> -Jesse  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Nov 19, 2011, at 8:58 AM, Hector Castro wrote:
> 
>> Not using CloudInit yet.  Currently deploying to an internal VMware setup 
>> with standard 11.10 server images.  My preseed file:
>> 
>>      https://gist.github.com/1377459
>> 
>> In my setup all of the nodes actually serve the same purpose.  I wrote a 
>> little Capistrano task to make the remote chef-solo runs a little more 
>> automated.  It handles synchronizing the repository and executing Chef.
>> 
>> --
>> Hector
>> 
>> On Nov 19, 2011, at 11:45 AM, S Ahmed wrote:
>> 
>>> With ubuntu, are you using cloudinit to preseed?
>>> 
>>> But with this setup, you have to run a different chef-solo command for 
>>> each node type correct?
>>> 
>>> I guess to automate this a little further, you could have some sort of 
>>> lookup system (maybe the hostname?) and look for a pattern, like if you 
>>> hosts are prefixed with 'db' then it is a database node type or 'www' for 
>>> a front end server.
>>> 
>>> On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Hector Castro 
>>> <
 >
>>>  wrote:
>>> I'd be interested to see other people's approaches to this as well.  
>>> Right now I have chef-solo 2-4 server setup as well.
>>> 
>>> First, I install Chef via APT at OS install time with preseeding.  On 
>>> Ubuntu/Debian Chef looks for cookbooks and roles in /var/cache/chef by 
>>> default.
>>> 
>>> I have a Git repository housing everything that eventually gets sync'd to 
>>> /var/cache/chef.  In config/ of that repository, I have one JSON file for 
>>> each node.  In roles/ I have all of the shared role JSON files.  
>>> Cookbooks live in cookbooks/ and site-cookbooks/.
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Hector
>>> 
>>> On Nov 18, 2011, at 4:14 PM, S Ahmed wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I'm planning on setting things up with the below setup.  This is for a 
>>>> 2-4 server setup, looking for guidance/best practises for a chef-solo 
>>>> repo.
>>>> 
>>>> When using chef-solo with a setup like:
>>>> 
>>>> /var/chef-solo/
>>>> /var/chef-solo/cookbooks
>>>> 
>>>> If I have web servers, a db server, etc. to configure, I guess it is 
>>>> just a matter of having the necessary recipies in the cookbook and then 
>>>> creating a seperate .json file like web1.json and db1.json correct?
>>>> 
>>>> I'll save this in a git repo, so that if I need to update anything I can 
>>>> then run a command than will update the repo's of all my servers, and 
>>>> then run the chef-solo command.
>>>> 
>>>> Running chef with:
>>>> 
>>>> chef-solo -c ~/solo.rb -j ~/web1.json
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>