Chef demo

Chef Infra (archive)
1

Ohai!

What do I get if I ask for trial hosted Chef server demo on Opscode’s page?
Package to install it under terminal or access to the web side of it?

I am asking because I have Chef-solo on my machine and Chef-client setup
(not my server) — so I am afraid if there will be collisions if I get
Chef server as well

Also wanted to ask — How does Chef server handle JSON files for a certain
node? I was told that Chef-server handles that with Postgresql
automatically but could you give me more details?

Thanks,

J.

2

On Aug 7, 2013, at 12:54 PM, Jasna Benčić jasna.bencic@teamsnap.com wrote:

What do I get if I ask for trial hosted Chef server demo on Opscode's page? Package to install it under terminal or access to the web side of it?

Hosted Chef is basically the world's largest known installation of Private Chef (server). So, you would be able to configure your chef-client nodes to connect to a back-end chef-server, as provided by Opscode.

I am asking because I have Chef-solo on my machine and Chef-client setup (not my server) --- so I am afraid if there will be collisions if I get Chef server as well

Chef-solo doesn't connect to a chef-server anywhere, so there's no worry about collisions there. For chef-client to be useful, you have to have a chef-server somewhere for it to talk to -- either you can host your own chef-server, or you can use Hosted Chef to provide that chef-server for you.

Also wanted to ask --- How does Chef server handle JSON files for a certain node? I was told that Chef-server handles that with Postgresql automatically but could you give me more details?

Can you clarify? Internally, I think pretty much everything Chef does is through JSON formatted data, although it can also understand a variety of other formatting methods for the same kind of information. So, I'm not understanding your question about how Chef would handle JSON files for a certain node.

Yes, for Chef 11.x, postgres is used internally to store most of the data, but there's a variety of tools that are used for different purposes. For example, I believe that some data is still being stored in solr (for indexing purposes), and I don't know if that information is being replicated between postgres and solr or not.

--
Brad Knowles brad@shub-internet.org
LinkedIn Profile: http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu

3

On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 8:19 PM, Brad Knowles brad@shub-internet.org wrote:

On Aug 7, 2013, at 12:54 PM, Jasna Benčić jasna.bencic@teamsnap.com
wrote:

What do I get if I ask for trial hosted Chef server demo on Opscode's
page? Package to install it under terminal or access to the web side of it?

Hosted Chef is basically the world's largest known installation of Private
Chef (server). So, you would be able to configure your chef-client nodes
to connect to a back-end chef-server, as provided by Opscode.

OK

I am asking because I have Chef-solo on my machine and Chef-client setup
(not my server) --- so I am afraid if there will be collisions if I get
Chef server as well

Chef-solo doesn't connect to a chef-server anywhere, so there's no worry
about collisions there. For chef-client to be useful, you have to have a
chef-server somewhere for it to talk to -- either you can host your own
chef-server, or you can use Hosted Chef to provide that chef-server for you.

Also wanted to ask --- How does Chef server handle JSON files for a
certain node? I was told that Chef-server handles that with Postgresql
automatically but could you give me more details?

Can you clarify? Internally, I think pretty much everything Chef does is
through JSON formatted data, although it can also understand a variety of
other formatting methods for the same kind of information. So, I'm not
understanding your question about how Chef would handle JSON files for a
certain node.

Yes, for Chef 11.x, postgres is used internally to store most of the data,
but there's a variety of tools that are used for different purposes. For
example, I believe that some data is still being stored in solr (for
indexing purposes), and I don't know if that information is being
replicated between postgres and solr or not.

--
Brad Knowles brad@shub-internet.org
LinkedIn Profile: http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu

Sure I can clarify.

So, I was reading this http://docs.opscode.com/essentials_node_object.html
and was wondering how does this happen i.e. storing JSON file about
certain node on a Chef server ----> "The node object consists of the
run-list and node attributes, which is a JSON file that is stored on the
Chef Server."

Many thanks for your help Brad

4

jasna.bencic@teamsnap.com writes:

Sure I can clarify.

So, I was reading this http://docs.opscode.com/essentials_node_object.html
and was wondering how does this happen i.e. storing JSON file about
certain node on a Chef server ----> "The node object consists of the
run-list and node attributes, which is a JSON file that is stored on the
Chef Server."

In the Chef 11 Server and in current Hosted Chef node data is stored by
compressing the JSON string using gzip and storing the resulting bytes
in a bytea column in postgres. The node name and environment are
duplicated in separate fields.

If you're curious about the pg schema used for OSC (Open Source Chef):

https://github.com/opscode/chef_db/blob/master/priv/pgsql_schema.sql
  • seth

--
Seth Falcon | Development Lead | Opscode | @sfalcon

5

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 5:09 AM, Seth Falcon seth@opscode.com wrote:

jasna.bencic@teamsnap.com writes:

Sure I can clarify.

So, I was reading this
http://docs.opscode.com/essentials_node_object.html
and was wondering how does this happen i.e. storing JSON file about
certain node on a Chef server ----> "The node object consists of the
run-list and node attributes, which is a JSON file that is stored on the
Chef Server."

In the Chef 11 Server and in current Hosted Chef node data is stored by
compressing the JSON string using gzip and storing the resulting bytes
in a bytea column in postgres. The node name and environment are
duplicated in separate fields.

If you're curious about the pg schema used for OSC (Open Source Chef):

https://github.com/opscode/chef_db/blob/master/priv/pgsql_schema.sql
  • seth

--
Seth Falcon | Development Lead | Opscode | @sfalcon

Awesome, thanks for explanation Seth, appreciate it