Overview

This is the dedicated repository storing every cookbook used in the Lab Course 'Cloud Architectures and Management' in SS2016 at the University of Stuttgart.

Repository Directories

This repository contains several directories, and each directory contains a README file that describes what it is for in greater detail, and how to use it for managing your systems with Chef.

• cookbooks/ - Cookbooks you download or create.
• data_bags/ - Store data bags and items in .json in the repository.
• roles/ - Store roles in .rb or .json in the repository.
• environments/ - Store environments in .rb or .json in the repository.

Configuration

The config file, .chef/knife.rb is a repository specific configuration file for knife. If you're using the Chef Platform, you can download one for your organization from the management console. If you're using the Open Source Chef Server, you can generate a new one with knife configure. For more information about configuring Knife, see the Knife documentation.

https://docs.chef.io/knife.html

AWS with Chef Provisioning

This section describes the setup and usage of Chef Provisioning with AWS

Prerequisites

Install all necessary packages for ruby gem installation

sudo apt-get install ruby-dev zlib1g-dev

Setup

Install the gem's for chef-provisioning (and aws)

sudo gem install chef-provisioning chef-provisioning-aws

If not already done, create chef folder and fix permissions

sudo mkdir -p /etc/chef

Replace 'user' with your local OS username!

sudp chown -R user.user /etc/chef

Configuration

Use the script chefProvisioningSetup.sh Script for the semi-automatic configuration.

Usage

Define a ruby script client.rb and run it using

chef-client -z -o 'recipe[cookbook::recipe]'

where -z = --local-mode | -o = run-list items

Amazon WebServices with Chef (DOES NOT WORK WITH LOCAL-MODE) DEPRECATED

This section describes specific setups to use Chef with the Amazon WebServices (AWS)

AWS EC2 Plugin

The official Chef plugin to create, bootstrap and manage Amazon EC2 instances (see https://github.com/chef/knife-ec2 for further information).

If using the ChefDK simply execute the following command:

chef gem install knife-ec2

Initializing

Use the script Knife AWS Credentials Initialization Script for the inital setup. It will automatically:

• Create the folder .chef within the chef-repo directory
• Create the Knife configuration file (knife.rb) and set the necessary values
• Create the folder .aws in your home directory
• Create the AWS credentials file and set the necessary values

After this executing READ THE MANUAL TODOs IN YOUR TERMINAL.

What you have to do manually:

• Edit the HOME/.aws/credentials file and fill in the "aws_secret_access_key" (see GoogleDrive)
• Copy the private key "Admin-chefIO-knife.pem" into the folder $HOME/.ssh/

Important Commands

Creating a new EC2 instance

knife ec2 server create -I <image-name>

knife ec2 server -VV create --image ami-87564feb --flavor t2.small --security-group-ids sg-badf38d2 --ssh-user ubuntu --ssh-port 22 --identity-file "$HOME/.aws/Admin-chefIO-knife.pem"

Exemplary images:

• ami-e2df388d: Amazon Linux AMI
• ami-87564feb: Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS

Listing all EC2 instances

knife ec2 server list

Terminating (and destroying) an existing EC2 instance

knife ec2 server delete --purge <instance-id>