# Chef Solo experience / best practices?

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [November 2, 2012, 12:03am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299 "2012-11-02T00:03:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jeremy\_Voorhis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jeremy_voorhis/32/552_2.png) [@Jeremy\_Voorhis](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Jeremy_Voorhis)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 12:03am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299/1 "2012-11-02T00:03:18Z")

</div>

Ohai,

I’d like to know if anyone has had success using chef-solo for a multi-node  
production deployment. I’ve heard and read reports of using it with  
MCollective a couple years ago, but haven’t heard much since.

I specifically don’t want to debate the merits of chef-solo vs chef-server,  
but I’d love to hear from those using chef-solo beyond dev/test.

Thanks!

Jeremy Voorhis

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jeff\_Blaine](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jeff_blaine/32/19_2.png) [@Jeff\_Blaine](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Jeff_Blaine)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 2:33pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299/2 "2012-11-02T14:33:16Z")

</div>

On 11/1/2012 8:03 PM, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:

> Ohai,
> 
> I'd like to know if anyone has had success using chef-solo for a  
> multi-node production deployment. I've heard and read reports of using  
> it with MCollective a couple years ago, but haven't heard much since.

Ben Rockwood uses it at Joyent.

[![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jeremy\_Voorhis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jeremy_voorhis/32/552_2.png) [@Jeremy\_Voorhis](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Jeremy_Voorhis)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299/3 "2012-11-02T17:21:46Z")

</div>

Thanks Jeff,

The talk coincided with a few things I've heard about cookbook distribution  
(HTTP with ACLs) and chef-solo execution, and there's lots to think about  
here.

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:33 AM, Jeff Blaine [jblaine@kickflop.net](mailto:jblaine@kickflop.net) wrote:

> On 11/1/2012 8:03 PM, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:
> 
> > Ohai,
> > 
> > I'd like to know if anyone has had success using chef-solo for a  
> > multi-node production deployment. I've heard and read reports of using  
> > it with MCollective a couple years ago, but haven't heard much since.
> 
> Ben Rockwood uses it at Joyent.
> 
> [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?**v=he7vxhm6v64)[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jens\_Skott](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jens_skott/32/492_2.png) [@Jens\_Skott](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Jens_Skott)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 9:06pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299/4 "2012-11-02T21:06:39Z")

</div>

As a chef newbe I have only read about chef-solo some, what are the advantages of running chef-solo vs the chef server version?

Sent from my iPad

On 2 nov 2012, at 18:21, Jeremy Voorhis [jvoorhis@gmail.com](mailto:jvoorhis@gmail.com) wrote:

> Thanks Jeff,
> 
> The talk coincided with a few things I've heard about cookbook distribution (HTTP with ACLs) and chef-solo execution, and there's lots to think about here.
> 
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:33 AM, Jeff Blaine [jblaine@kickflop.net](mailto:jblaine@kickflop.net) wrote:
> 
> > On 11/1/2012 8:03 PM, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:
> > 
> > > Ohai,
> > > 
> > > I'd like to know if anyone has had success using chef-solo for a  
> > > multi-node production deployment. I've heard and read reports of using  
> > > it with MCollective a couple years ago, but haven't heard much since.
> > 
> > Ben Rockwood uses it at Joyent.
> > 
> > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jeremy\_Voorhis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jeremy_voorhis/32/552_2.png) [@Jeremy\_Voorhis](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Jeremy_Voorhis)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 11:18pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299/5 "2012-11-02T23:18:26Z")

</div>

Ben Rockwood actually covers some of them on some of them in the video  
above.

Testing and development with Vagrant is a great reason to use and support  
chef-solo. Using chef-solo at a larger scale, lets you remove the  
dependency on chef-server and have more flexibility with your chef runs,  
but you lose the benefits of using knife for provisioning, and chef-server  
for inventory and node search.

Hope that helps,

Jeremy Voorhis

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Jens Skott [jens.skott@schibsted.se](mailto:jens.skott@schibsted.se) wrote:

> As a chef newbe I have only read about chef-solo some, what are the  
> advantages of running chef-solo vs the chef server version?
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On 2 nov 2012, at 18:21, Jeremy Voorhis [jvoorhis@gmail.com](mailto:jvoorhis@gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> Thanks Jeff,
> 
> The talk coincided with a few things I've heard about cookbook  
> distribution (HTTP with ACLs) and chef-solo execution, and there's lots to  
> think about here.
> 
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:33 AM, Jeff Blaine [jblaine@kickflop.net](mailto:jblaine@kickflop.net) wrote:
> 
> > On 11/1/2012 8:03 PM, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:
> > 
> > > Ohai,
> > > 
> > > I'd like to know if anyone has had success using chef-solo for a  
> > > multi-node production deployment. I've heard and read reports of using  
> > > it with MCollective a couple years ago, but haven't heard much since.
> > 
> > Ben Rockwood uses it at Joyent.
> > 
> > [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?**v=he7vxhm6v64)[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Booker\_Bense](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/booker_bense/32/117_2.png) [@Booker\_Bense](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Booker_Bense)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2012, 3:11pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299/6 "2012-11-06T15:11:19Z")

</div>

The primary difference between solo and server is the ability to use search  
in the cookbooks. For instance, I could search for nodes that have the "dns  
server" role and use the results of that search to populate  
/etc/resolv.conf. That's a kind of trivial example, but the ability to  
search adds an extra layer of  
automation. When I was looking at puppet vs chef, the search capabilities  
and database available in server were the primary deciding points in Chef's  
favor.  
We need that desperately, you may not.

In the current version, the server is a bit of a "mystery box" to set up  
and run. It really depends on the scale and scope of where you are starting  
in your  
deployment.

This podcast ( Episode 28 ) might offer some insights.

[http://devopscafe.org/show/?currentPage=2](http://devopscafe.org/show/?currentPage=2)

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Jens Skott [jens.skott@schibsted.se](mailto:jens.skott@schibsted.se) wrote:

> As a chef newbe I have only read about chef-solo some, what are the  
> advantages of running chef-solo vs the chef server version?
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On 2 nov 2012, at 18:21, Jeremy Voorhis [jvoorhis@gmail.com](mailto:jvoorhis@gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> Thanks Jeff,
> 
> The talk coincided with a few things I've heard about cookbook  
> distribution (HTTP with ACLs) and chef-solo execution, and there's lots to  
> think about here.
> 
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:33 AM, Jeff Blaine [jblaine@kickflop.net](mailto:jblaine@kickflop.net) wrote:
> 
> > On 11/1/2012 8:03 PM, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:
> > 
> > > Ohai,
> > > 
> > > I'd like to know if anyone has had success using chef-solo for a  
> > > multi-node production deployment. I've heard and read reports of using  
> > > it with MCollective a couple years ago, but haven't heard much since.
> > 
> > Ben Rockwood uses it at Joyent.
> > 
> > [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?**v=he7vxhm6v64)[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nilesh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/nilesh/32/654_2.png) [@Nilesh](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Nilesh)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2012, 6:36pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-solo-experience-best-practices/3299/7 "2012-11-07T18:36:56Z")

</div>

Thanks Kudos to @benr I found this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64) very useful indeed.

I would like to know what are the best practices for bootstrap/deployment on ec2/openstack/hpcloud/azure etc. while using chef-solo for config management. Appreciate any pointers. Thanks.

* * *

From: Booker Bense [bbense@gmail.com](mailto:bbense@gmail.com)  
To: [chef@lists.opscode.com](mailto:chef@lists.opscode.com)  
Sent: Tuesday, November 6, 2012 7:11 AM  
Subject: [chef] Re: Re: Re: Chef Solo experience / best practices?

The primary difference between solo and server is the ability to use search in the cookbooks. For instance, I could search for nodes that have the "dns server" role and use the results of that search to populate /etc/resolv.conf. That's a kind of trivial example, but the ability to search adds an extra layer of  
automation. When I was looking at puppet vs chef, the search capabilities and database available in server were the primary deciding points in Chef's favor.  
We need that desperately, you may not.

In the current version, the server is a bit of a "mystery box" to set up and run. It really depends on the scale and scope of where you are starting in your  
deployment.

This podcast ( Episode 28 ) might offer some insights.

[http://devopscafe.org/show/?currentPage=2](http://devopscafe.org/show/?currentPage=2)

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Jens Skott [jens.skott@schibsted.se](mailto:jens.skott@schibsted.se) wrote:

As a chef newbe I have only read about chef-solo some, what are the advantages of running chef-solo vs the chef server version?

> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On 2 nov 2012, at 18:21, Jeremy Voorhis [jvoorhis@gmail.com](mailto:jvoorhis@gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> Thanks Jeff,
> 
> > The talk coincided with a few things I've heard about cookbook distribution (HTTP with ACLs) and chef-solo execution, and there's lots to think about here.
> > 
> > On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 7:33 AM, Jeff Blaine [jblaine@kickflop.net](mailto:jblaine@kickflop.net) wrote:
> > 
> > On 11/1/2012 8:03 PM, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:
> > 
> > > Ohai,
> > > 
> > > > I'd like to know if anyone has had success using chef-solo for a  
> > > > multi-node production deployment. I've heard and read reports of using  
> > > > it with MCollective a couple years ago, but haven't heard much since.

Ben Rockwood uses it at Joyent.

> > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he7vxhm6v64)