[chef] Cookbook Management for Complex Infrastructure

[Erik Ogan < >]

Background:

We currently have several hundred nodes managed by Chef 0.10(.4) on a private Chef server. We are using librarian-chef to manage off-the-shelf cookbooks (~30 or so), and have a single repository for the remaining custom cookbooks (>60) [*]

I am looking to modernize this setup. It is likely[**] to be a clean-slate rebuild with Chef 12, pulling in cookbooks (more likely portions of recipes) as needed. This is also a chance to align our processes with the state-of-the-art thinking on how to manage these resources.

Berkshelf is the current, prescribed tool for managing cookbooks. Berkshelf (appears to) require each cookbook in its own repository. This is great for modularity, it forces a separation of concerns, but while I plan to reduce the number of custom, private cookbooks (removing cruft, replacing some with off-the-shelf cookbooks configured with attributes), I still expect to have enough cookbooks that this would consume all of our allotment of private repositories.

In light of that, I have tried to set up a repository with cookbooks as peers inside, but the more hoops I jump through to make that work, the more sure I become that I’m missing something obvious in the way to manage cookbooks. (Especially right now where I cannot test a custom cookbook with chefspec if it depends on another custom/private cookbook).

So, how do larger installations manage their private cookbooks? What have I missed?

-e

[*]  I don’t know if that constitutes “large” in the community, but I’m comfortable saying there’s a fair bit of complexity to it.

[**] For reasons that are way out of scope of this message.

--

Erik Ogan

" target="_blank">

415.BE.MESSY