Chef Fundamentals

Module 1: Introduction to DevOps – Positioning Chef in a CI/CD pipeline
– DevOps Culture
– DevOps Tools overview
– Continuous Integration
– Continuous Delivery
– Continuous Deployment
– Delivery vs. Deployment

Module 2: What is Chef?
– What is Chef?
– Why use Chef?

Module 3: Chef Core Components
– Chef Architecture
– ChefDK vs. Chef Workstation
– Overview of Chef Server, Nodes and Supermarket
Hands-on Lab: Installing Chef Workstation and running the first “Hello world!” recipe

Module 4: Chef Core Concepts
– Resources
– Recipes
– Cookbooks
– Run Lists
– Configuration Drift
Hands-on Lab:
– Creating simple recipes and making use of the “file” resource to create specific files, using the “user” and “group” resources to create a new user.
– Generating cookbooks and using the “package” and “service” resources to install system packages and activating services. Using the “bash” resource to execute arbitrary code. Conditioning with “guards”.

Module 5: Ohai
– Ohai Overview
– Ohai Configuration
Hands-on Lab: Using the Ohai plugin to acquire system attributes

Module 6: Chef Server
– Chef Server Overview
– Chef Server Components
– Dimensioning of the Chef Server
– Installation of the Chef Server
– The chef-client run
Hands-on Lab:
– Installing and configuring Chef Server
– Creating a local Chef repository (chef repo) and “talking” to the Chef Server

Module 7: Knife & Bootstrapping a node
– What is Knife
– Bootstrapping a node with knife
– Knife common options
Hands-on Lab: Bootstrapping a node with the “Knife” tool

Module 8: Cookbooks & Run-lists in the context of a Chef Server
– Creating and applying a run-list
– Good practices
Hands-on Lab: Applying a run-list to a bootstrapped node and executing Chef remotely (running the chef-client). Creating a basic “web-server” on the remote node. Managing a remote node.

Module 9: Working with Templates
– How to work with Templates – examples
Hands-on Lab: Using templates to generate dynamically populated files.

Module 10: Attributes
– Attributes Overview
– Types of Attributes
– How chef-client uses attributes
Hands-on Lab: Using attributes and templates to generate a “sudoers” file as well as a “hosts” file.

Module 11: Using Libraries
– Libraries overview
– Libraries use cases
Hands-on Lab: Creating simple libraries and wrapper functions. Using custom code to determine OS family.

Module 12: The Chef Test Kitchen – a safe space for trial and error
– What is Test Kitchen?
– Kitchen Configuration
– Kitchen use cases
Hands-on Lab: Creating a test environment inside a Docker container with Test Kitchen.

Module 13: Kitchen “InSpec”
– What is InSpec?
– InSpec profiles
– Making sure your recipes hit home
Hands-on Lab: Validating your test environment and recipes with Kitchen InSpec.