[chef] Re: node vs client...

[Joshua Timberman < >]

Hello!

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Kelly Goedert 
<
 >
 wrote:
>
> I'm a little bit confused... with nodes and clients... following the
> devopscasts, the mysql server was installed on a client machine, using
> bootstrap method but the client machine didn't have a chef client installed.
> I only need the chef client installed if I want to run it on a regular basis
> to update configs? Or, the bootstrap installation already installed the chef
> client?

Nodes are the systems that you configure with Chef. They have data
(attributes) and a list of roles or recipes to run (run list). Nodes
typically run Chef either in standalone mode (chef-solo) or connected
to a Chef Server (chef-client).

Clients authenticate to the Chef Server API (Opscode Hosted/Private
Chef, Open Source Chef Server).

`chef-client` is a program installed with Chef. It can be run a single
time on the command line, or as a daemon.

We normally call the process of setting up a node to run Chef
"bootstrapping." This is often done with `knife bootstrap` command.

More information about these terms here, with links to additional detail:

http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Glossary

-- 
Opscode, Inc
Joshua Timberman, Technical Program Manager
IRC, Skype, Twitter, Github: jtimberman