Chef Core Example Configurations and Test Suites

Purpose

The focus of this project is to have a canned solution for a solid infrastructure foundation using Chef and AWS. Browse the core_examples repo for example Chef environments, roles, data bags, CloudFormations templates and more. They are configured to use the Chef Core suite of cookbooks. It's a starting point to help jump into the Chef world fresh or refactor a better configuration infrastructure. The intent is to provide wrapper cookbooks for many common services that have overrides and providers to stand up your stack without having to make cookbook customizations. The goal of this project is aided at eliminating the need for writing dozens of wrapper cookbooks or repeating code. Most likely there may be the need to have some custom deployment cookbooks that piggyback the Chef Core suite, but it should drastically reduce the effort.

Design

The design idea came to me one day after a couple years of repeatably writing wrapper cookbooks for several different development teams. I found the layout that was given to use was an inferior design that had numerous faults.

So, I decided to make a project that directly addressed these issues aims at simplifying stack setup and management.

I hope to help others by giving a Chef foundation that is solid, extensible and drives to dry up code.

I'm a long way from being finished. I hope that others will help me grow the project and continually improve it.

The idea is to not have to write tons of wrapper cookbooks, work with all major flavors of operating systems and to setup a stack for a development team is as simple as filling out a few JSON "configuration" files (Environment and Data Bags).

Supported Platforms

• Linux
• Windows (WIP)

Structure

Roles

Roles specify the generic service of the system. This is where the run list is setup.

Name	Packages
app	Mediawiki, Wordpress, WAR Deploy, Teamspeak3
ci	Go, Jenkins, Gitlab Ci
database	MySQL, MsSQL, Postgres, MongoDB, Redis
logs	Splunk
media	Plex Server
monitoring	Nagios, Sensu
search	Solr, Sphinx, Elastic Search
security	firewall, antivirus, Nessus
version_control	Subversion, Git, Gitlab
web	Apache, Nginx, Unicorn, Tomcat, IIS

Environments, Roles and Data Bags

Use the examples provided to model your custom configurations.

TESTING (Kitchen)

Supported Host Platforms

• Linux
• Windows
• Mac

Setup DevOps Workstation

More in-depth instructions can be found HERE

1. Install latest Virtualbox
   1. Virtualbox Download
   2. Enable VT in BIOS
2. Install latest Vagrant
   1. Vagrant Download
3. Install Chef Development Kit
   1. ChefDK Download
4. Download This Project
   1. Create repo directory
      1. mkdir -p ~/Development/chef/cookbooks/
   2. git clone https://github.com/chefcore/config_examples.git ~/Development/chef/cookbooks/
5. (Optional) Create .kitchen.local.yml file and add proxy or other custom settings like resources.

Windows Specific

PowerShell Setup

ChefDK on Windows

1. Create C:\Dev Folder (Shortens path as a workaround to 260 character limitation)
   1. mkdir C:\Dev
2. Create C:\Dev\github Folder
   1. mkdir C:\Dev\chef
3. Create C:\Dev\github\chefcore Folder
   1. mkdir C:\Dev\chef\cookbooks
4. Install git client
   1. Git Client Download
   2. Select to allow it to run from dos prompt
5. Download This Project
   1. git clone https://github.com/bonusbits/bonusbits_linux_base.git C:\Dev\chef\cookbooks
6. Set User Profile Environment Variables Some of these settings deals with Home folders on Shares
   1. HTTP_PROXY=http://username:password@proxy.domain.com:8000
   2. HTTPS_PROXY=https://username:password@proxy.domain.com:8000
   3. CHEFDK_PATH=C:\Dev\.chefdk
   4. PATH=%PATH%;C:\Dev\.chefdk\gem\ruby\2.1.0\bin;C:\opscode\chefdk\embedded\bin"
   5. VBOX_USER_HOME=C:\Dev\.VirtualBox
   6. VAGRANT_HOME=C:\Dev\.vagrant.d
   7. BERKSHELF_PATH=C:\Dev\.berkshelf
   8. GEM_ROOT=C:\opscode\chefdk\embedded\lib\ruby\gems\2.1.0
   9. GEM_HOME=C:\Dev\.chefdk\gem\ruby\2.1.0
   10. GEM_PATH=C:\Dev\.chefdk\gem\ruby\2.1.0;C:\opscode\chefdk\embedded\lib\ruby\gem
7. Set PowerShell execution policy
   1. Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted
8. Create WindowsPowerShell user directory
   1. mkdir %USERPROFILE%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell
9. Added ChefDK init to PowerShell user profile
   1. "chef shell-init powershell | Invoke-Expression" >> $PROFILE

Vagrant Local VirtualBox VM

First change to the root directory of config_examples in a shell.

List all Test Suites

There are many OS flavors and more coming. So, first list whats available and pick which one you'd like to test out. If you don't specify a test suite it will try to set them all up and most likely run your system out of storage, memory or both.

kitchen list

Create Local VM and Run Chef Client

Also used to run Chef Client again after making local cookbook changes

kitchen core-base-el-centos-66 converge

Run Integration Tests with Kitchen

kitchen core-base-el-centos-66 verify

Delete VM

kitchen core-base-el-centos-66 destroy

Completed

1. core_base
2. core_web::apache

Resources

Setup DevOps Workstation

• Setup Mac DevOps Workstation
• Setup Ubuntu DevOps Workstation
• Setup Windows DevOps Workstation

Test Kitchen

• Setup Test Kitchen
• Test Kitchen Usage