Chef

Users select cookbooks and roles on the order form as applications, and CMP installs the Chef agent on the new server and applies those cookbooks and roles through Chef. The Chef tile appears in the Add dialog only where a Chef configuration manager already exists, so this page covers deployments that already run Chef.

What the integration does

• Installs cookbooks and roles on servers as CMP applications.
• Installs the Chef agent on each new server.
• Discovers and synchronizes Chef nodes.

Prerequisites

CMP runs knife on the appliance to bootstrap agents, so Chef Workstation must be installed there with knife on the path. Follow the Chef Workstation install guide.

CMP needs to reach the Chef server on its API port and log in to each server it bootstraps.

Tell CloudBolt Support if you plan to use Chef on Windows.

Connect to a Chef server

Create one configuration manager per Chef organization.

Create the configuration manager

1. Go to Admin > Configuration Managers, then select Add.

2. Select the Chef tile.

3. Complete the form:

   Field	Description
   Name	Required. Label for the configuration.
   Protocol, Hostname, and Port	The Chef server’s address, typically HTTPS on port 443. For hosted Chef, the hostname is api.chef.io.
   Organization name	The Chef organization that this manager serves.
   CB client name	The client name in Chef for the CMP appliance. Enter a placeholder and update it once you have the key files in place.
   Knife bootstrap additional args	Optional arguments added to every knife bootstrap call. Django template syntax works here.
   Delete node if exists	Select to remove a Chef node with the same name before bootstrapping to prevent a rebuilt server collision.
   Environments	The environments this manager serves. Set this now or later from the configuration manager or the environment.

4. Select Create.

If your Chef server uses a self-signed certificate, add --node-ssl-verify-mode none to Knife bootstrap additional args.

Add the key files

Each configuration manager reads its Chef credentials from its own directory on the appliance. For each Chef organization, on the appliance:

1. Create the directory /var/opt/cloudbolt/connectors/chef/<ID>, where <ID> is the configuration manager’s numeric ID from the URL of its detail page.
2. From the Chef server, obtain the validator key, the client key for CMP, and the knife.rb configuration file, then copy all three into that directory. The client key file must be named for the client, as in <client name>.pem.
3. Edit knife.rb so that its client_key and validation_key lines point to the same directory.
4. In CMP, edit the configuration manager and set CB client name to the client name from the key filename.

To import cookbooks from the community site, also set syntax_check_cache_path in knife.rb.

How CMP bootstraps a new server

CMP calls knife bootstrap for the new server, naming the node after the server’s hostname and pointing knife at the knife.rb for that configuration manager. Ensure CMP has credentials for the server it is bootstrapping: an SSH key for cases such as Linux on AWS, or a password and username. Credentials can come from the template on the resource handler page, from a parameter set globally or at the group or environment level, or from the order form. See Authentication requirements.

On Linux, CMP connects over SSH as the credentialed user and adds sudo when that user is not root.

A server carrying a chef_environment parameter value is bootstrapped into that Chef environment. Bootstrapping has an hour to complete before CMP marks it as failed.

Windows servers

On Windows, CMP connects over WinRM on port 5986, so WinRM must be enabled in the image or template. See Windows servers using WinRM for configuration and troubleshooting.

To use port 5985 instead, put this in Knife bootstrap additional args:

{% if server.is_windows %}
-p 5985
{% endif %}

Install cookbooks and roles

Associate the configuration manager with your environments, then create Chef cookbook and role objects in CMP. From then on, an order in one of those environments offers those cookbooks and roles as applications on the order form. CMP installs the agent on the new server, calls Chef to apply the chosen configuration, and the job’s progress records both actions.

Applications can be installed and uninstalled at any point afterward, from the server list or a server’s detail page.

Requesters do not need to know Chef or that Chef is involved.