DevOps Classroom Series – 27/Oct/2021

Configuration Management Architectural Models

• CM majorly has two architectural models
  • PUSH BASED CM:
    • CM server initiates communication with the nodes
    • For this CM server needs to maintain list of nodes & Credentials
    • Examples:
      • Ansible
      • Salt Stack
  • PULL BASED CM:
    • Nodes initiate communication with the CM Server
    • For this Nodes need to install CM agent
    • Examples:
      • Chef
      • Puppet

Chef

• Chef uses PULL BASED Configuration Management and can be used whether your nodes are on-premise or in cloud.
• Lets dive into Chef Architecture
• Bringing up the Chef Server:
  • Chef server can be installed on the linux machine with 4 Cores and 8 GB of RAM. Here chef is free till 10 nodes
  • For learning purposes chef offers a hosted chef server which we can use, we will start learning from here Refer Here
    • Create an organization and download the starter kit
    • Note: Downloading the starter kit multiple times changes the keys used for communication
• Configuring Chef Workstation:
  • Refer Here to download the chef workstation
  • Lets install the chef workstation
  • Proceed with installation defaults
  • To verify if the installation is successful, after the installation is complete launch windows terminal/powershell and execute the following commands