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provisioning.md

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Virtual Machine Provisioning

Chef Solo

All file relevant to the provisioning of a virtual machine with Chef Solo will be located in the virtual machine instance directory. Download a virtual machine template with pre-installed Chef client and start for example with host name lxdev01.

$ vm template remote download debian64-6.0.4-chef-client-0.10.8.kvm.tgz
$ vm clone debian64-6.0.4-chef-client-0.10.8 lxdev01

(Overwrite the environment variable $CHEF_COOKBOOKS with the path to your Chef repository unless the default $HOME/chef/cookbooks/ is correct.) Select the list of cookbooks you want to deploy and add them one-by-one. All added cookbooks will be synced automatically to the virtual machine instance as soon as provisioning is executed.

$ vm config add cookbook apt resolve ntp

You can change your cookbooks locally at any time. Any re-execution of the provisioning will run a differential sync to make all changes visible inside the virtual machine. Adjust the file chef_attribtues.json with the configuration you want to use for the virtual machine instance, e.g.:

{ 
  "run_list": [ 
    "recipe[apt]",
    "recipe[ntp]",
    "recipe[resolv]"
  ],
  "ntp": {
    "servers": [ "timeserver.gsi.de" ]
  },
  "resolv": {
    "nameserver": [ "10.1.1.1" ],
    "search": "devops.test gsi.de"
  }
}

And finally execute Chef-Solo to configure the virtual machine with the command vm config solo. Each virtual machine keeps it own Chef configuration in its directory. Except of the chef_attributes.json file you can also adjust the chef_config.rb file. This file is also synced to the instance at each execution of the provisioning process. It is used to configure the chef-client executed in the virtual machine. Looking into this file will show you where cookbooks and roles will be located and allows you to increase the logging level by setting log_level :debug.

The cookbook/ and roles/ directories contain links to the actual cookbooks and role files. Adding a role to your provision process is done by executing:

» vm config add role ~/chef/cookbooks/sys/tests/roles/sys_autofs_test.rb 
Role 'sys_autofs_test.rb' added.
» vm config solo "role[sys_autofs_test]"
INFO: Creating Chef attributes file ./chef_attributes.json
[...SNIP...]

In case the only content of chef_attributes.json is a specific role or recipe inside the run-list, create the file using an optional parameter to vm config solo.

Chef Server

We call the Chef-server virtual machine instance for the development environment lxcm01.devops.test (for (L)inu(x) (c)onfiguration (m)anagement). Provisioning will be done using chef-solo:

We add a couple of dependency Chef cookbooks to the instance configuration. Adjust the Chef node description in chef_attributes.json like:

{ 
  "run_list": [ 
    "recipe[apt]",
    "recipe[ntp]",
    "recipe[chef::server]"
  ]
}

Finally we execute Chef solo with:

$ vm config solo
[... SNIP ...]
[Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:40:06 +0200] INFO: Chef Run complete in 383.407762 seconds
[Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:40:06 +0200] INFO: Running report handlers
[Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:40:06 +0200] INFO: Report handlers complete

Configure the Chef-Server

Installation and configuration will take some time, be patient. For my test-installations I'm just using the devops user account to gain administrative access to Chef.

$ vm exec sudo chmod a+r /etc/chef/webui.pem /etc/chef/validation.pem
$ vm exec knife configure -i
WARNING: No knife configuration file found
Where should I put the config file? [~/.chef/knife.rb] 
Please enter the chef server URL: [http://lxcm01.devops.gsi.de:4000] 
Please enter a clientname for the new client: [devops] 
Please enter the existing admin clientname: [chef-webui] 
Please enter the location of the existing admin client's private key: [/etc/chef/webui.pem] 
Please enter the validation clientname: [chef-validator] 
Please enter the location of the validation key: [/etc/chef/validation.pem] 
Please enter the path to a chef repository (or leave blank): 
Creating initial API user...
Created client[devops]
Configuration file written to /home/devops/.chef/knife.rb

This creates the credentials for the devops user. Move them out of the virtual machine instance and store them to the container. Later they will be used to connect clients to this Chef-server instance.

$ mkdir chef
$ vm get /etc/chef/validation.pem chef/
$ vm get .chef/devops.pem chef/
$ cp /srv/vms/_config/chef_client.rb .

Copy the default _config/chef-client.rb configuration distributed with this scripts to the virtual machine instance directory. Finally create a script to define an alias to connect to your new virtual chef server devops_env.sh.

# Use Chef Knife configuration in the local directory to
# connect to the server.
function kn() { knife $@ -c $PWD/chef/knife.rb; }

As you can see it uses a configuration file chef/knife.rb. Copy the default configuration from _config/chef_knife.rb and adjust your cookbook path.

$ cp /srv/vms/_config/chef_knife.rb chef/knife.rb
$ source devops_env.sh

Connect a Chef Client

Next step is to connect a couple of virtual machine instances as clients to the Chef-server.

$ vm clone debian64-6.0.4-chef-client-0.10.8 lxb001
$ vm config client lxcm01
$ vm clone debian64-6.0.4-chef-client-0.10.8 lxb002
$ vm config client lxcm01

List the nodes connected to the Chef-Server with:

$ kn node list
lxb001.devops.test
lxb002.devops.test