Chef Server Variants

• Chef Server has three different variants used for different purposes
  • Chef Infra Server:
    • This is production grade infra server written in ruby on rails which can be used for chef infra.
    • Preferred way for run chef in enterprises.
  • Chef Zero:
    • It is an easy-install in-memory chef server.
    • It is a single node setup (It Runs locally)
    • This is used for chef-client testing
    • Test Kitchen uses chef zero to simulate chef-server
  • Chef Solo:
    • This is an open-source version of chef-client that allows you to run cookbooks without installing chef-server
    • It is a single node setup (It Runs locally)
    • It executes Chef-infra client in a way that it doesnot require chef server
    • This is used by infra provisioning tools like terraform/packer etc

Writing Tests

• Lets create a cookbook for installing tomcat 9 on ubuntu 18.04
• Documentation reference [Refer Here]
• Manual Steps – flavor 1

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openjdk-11-jdk -y
wget http://www-us.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.35/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.35.tar.gz
tar xzf apache-tomcat-9.0.35.tar.gz
sudo mv apache-tomcat-9.0.35 /usr/local/tomcat9
echo "export CATALINA_HOME="/usr/local/tomcat9"" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-oracle"" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export JRE_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-oracle"" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

<!-- user manager can access only manager section -->
<role rolename="manager-gui" />
<user username="manager" password="_SECRET_PASSWORD_" roles="manager-gui" />

conf/tomcat-users.xml
<!-- user admin can access manager and admin section both -->
<role rolename="admin-gui" />
<user username="admin" password="_SECRET_PASSWORD_" roles="manager-gui,admin-gui" />

• manual steps flavor 2

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openjdk-11-jdk -y
sudo apt-get install tomcat9 -y
sudo apt-get install tomcat9-admin tomcat9-docs tomcat9-user tomcat9-examples tomcat9-common -y
edit /etc/tomcat7/tomcat-users.xml to add
<user username="admin" password="password" roles="manager-gui,admin-gui"/>

• Lets start with flavor2
• Try writing a recipe for the above steps
• To create configuration files with static content we can create a file in the chef cookbook.

chef generate file . tomcat-users.xml

• To copy the files from local cookbook to chef node there is a resource called as cookbook_file Refer Here
• The contents of this cookbook are shared over here

Chef Inspec

• Chef Inspec is an open-source framework for testing and auditing your applications & infrastructure.
• Chef works by comparing the actual state of test kitchen instance with the expressed state of yours in easy to write inspec code.
• Inspec desired state expression looks as shown below

describe <entity> do
  it { <expectation> }
end

• In the <entity> section we can use inspec resources Refer Here
• Expectations can be set by matchers Refer Here
• Sample Test Execution
• The test code is hosted at here