[chef] Re: RE: Running chef in multiple environments

[DV < >]

It seems there's two common answers to the "role problem":

* Set up multiple Chef servers

* Don't use roles

Both are kind of a pain in the ass for various reasons... 

Having multiple Chef servers means I can't depend on Chef to seamlessly provide configuration across environments, where needed (such as relying on Chef's search function). I also have to ensure all of my Chef servers have correct versions of Chef artifacts.

Not using roles... Well, I just don't like the idea. Roles are just such a great way to group things together as well as separate Chef's functionalities into distinct steps. Roles are also very simple to look at - just one file, no versions to increment, low hassle.

So, my point is something my colleague brought up recently - why run chef-client as a daemon on production runway at all? Why not run it on demand, such as when changes need to go out to production? From my experience anyway, our production runways never get any updates when they are actually serving production traffic, so it's safe to turn chef-client off to prevent any accidental promotion of cookbooks, environments, or roles to production.

That way you can keep using just one Chef server and keep using roles.

On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 6:01 AM, Justin Franks < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Tom,

We have spent much time with Opscode coming onsite to help train us. We also have similar environments to you. After talking with Opscode instructors it was decided to create a chef server for each environment. For us it works well.

It may work well for you too.

*************************
Justin Franks
Lead Operations Engineer
SaaS, Cloud, Data Centers & Infrastructure
Lithium Technologies, Inc
225 Bush St., 15th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94104
tel: +1 415 757 3100 x3219

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From: Deprez, Tom < " target="_blank"> >
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 1:56 AM
To: " target="_blank">
Subject: [chef] Running chef in multiple environments

 

Hi,

 

We’re using chef to build our new hosting environment, which comprises of 3 environments (dev, staging and production), and manage our own chef server. So far we’ve been using chef environments to change variables etc between the 3 environments. However, we’ve come across an issue whereby we need to test a new role in our dev environement.

 

With cookbooks we can restrict the version that is used between environments, but there doesn’t seem to be anything similar with roles (or data bags, which is another issue).

 

I’m just wondering, what do people do in this situation? Should we be looking to run a separate chef server in each environment instead of using chef environments?

 

Thanks

Tom

 

 

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