[chef] Re: Re: Re: Ad-hoc tasks and ad-hoc sources

[Brad Knowles < >]

On Mar 21, 2012, at 6:49 PM, Alon Rohter wrote:

> I'm actually quite interested in ad hoc resource execution as well, 
> particularly as applied to more advanced orchestration uses.  For command 
> and control, full chef-client runs are expensive and awkward, particularly 
> when I need to run one-off resources/recipes.  I love having all my code in 
> one place, and utilizing all the existing knowledge/state that the 
> chef-server keeps about my infrastructure, so having to use some external 
> system (like mcollective) to handle this kind of thing isn't appealing.

If your full chef-client runs are too expensive and awkward, then my view is 
that they have not been written correctly.  Or, at the very least, you're 
going to have to do a lot of work to convince me that they have been written 
as well as they can be, and that there are some operations that just take too 
long.

Even the default Zenoss cookbook will take nearly 30 minutes to run when it 
does a full re-model, but it's smart and keeps some internal timers so that 
only happens every six hours or so.  And even that could be potentially moved 
outside of chef, so that chef is just responsible for installation and 
configuration of which nodes need to be monitored, and all the rest is done 
asynchronously to the chef-client run.


If you need some orchestration hooks, then you can use heavier tools like 
zookeeper, or lighter ones like noah.  That would at least get you the near 
real-time callback mechanism, which could then be hooked into a chef run.


I remain extremely skeptical that there is a real need for running ad-hoc 
individual recipes outside of a proper chef run.  In my book, this falls into 
the category of extraordinary claims.  Feel free to provide extraordinary 
proof in order to convince me.

-- 
Brad Knowles 
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SAGE Level IV, Chef Level 0.0.1