CHEF: The Top Powerful tool for Configuration Management

 

CHEF: The Top Powerful tool for Configuration Management

In the deploying process of new services and applications in an organization by the devops engineer, there are various tasks included like install, update network package and make machine server ready for deployment. For all this process it will take large human efforts and resources. The solution for this introduced as configuration management and the tools for this configuration management are Chef, puppet. Using these tools you can deploy, repair and update the whole application infrastructure with automation process. Manily, the Chef is a powerful automation tool which can deploy, repair, update and manage server and application to any other environment.

Whatis Chef?

 Chef is a configuration management automation tool which manages the infrastructure by writing code rather than the manual process to automate process, tested and deployed very easily. It is a client-server architecture that supports multiple platforms like windows, Ubuntu, Centos and Solaris etc. Chef can integrate with cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Open stack.

 Before using the Chef let’s know that what is exactly configuration management.

 As a system engineer in your firm, if  you want to deploy or update software or an operating system on more than hundreds of  systems in your firm in a single day. If you do this process  manually it will causes to multiple errors, lead to software crash issues while updating and we will not be able to make it back to the previous version. To solve these types of issues we use configuration management.

 Configuration management maintain track of all the software and hardware information of a company and it repairs, deploys and updates the entire application with its automation procedure. It handles of work of hundreds of servers and applications. Some tools used for Configuration management are Chef, Puppet, Ansible, CF Engine, SaltStack, etc.

 Why Chef?

 Chef, mainly automated the application configuration, deploy and manage the whole network even if it is working on cloud or hybrid You can speed up the deployment process with Chef. It accelerates the software delivery, the speed of software development refers to how quickly the software is able to adapt in response to new requirements or conditions.

 For example, if any organization shifting their office into a different environment and need system administrators to install, update and deploy software on hundreds of system in overnight. When system engineer does this work manually iy may cause Human errors and software functionality issues. At this stage, Chef will helps as a powerful automated tool which transfers infrastructure into code.

Benefits with Chef:

l  Accelerating software delivery

l  Increased service Resiliency

l  Risk ManagementCloud Adoption

l  Managing Data Centers and Cloud Environments

l  Streamlined IT operation and Workflow

 Features of Chef:

 l  Easy to handle hudreds of servers with less number ofo employees

l  It is easy to manage using operating systems such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD

l  It maintains a blueprint of the entire infrastructure.

l  Easy to integrate with all major cloud service providers

l  It acts as a centralized management means single Chef server can be used as the center for deploying the policies.

 

HowChef Works?

 Basically Chef has three components:

 

1.        Chef Server: This is acts as a center hub for all the operations were changes are stores.

2.        Work Stations: The place where all the codes created or changed

3.        Nodes: These are machine that is managing by Chef

The user can interact with chef and chef server through Chef Workstation. Knife and Chef command line tools are used for interacting with Chef Server. Chef node is a virtual or a cloud machine managed by chef and each node is configured by Chef-Client installed on it. Chef server stores all part of the configuration. It ensures all the elements are in right place and are working as expected.

Chef Components:

Chef has major components such as,

 l  Workstation

l  Cookbook

l  Node

l  Chef-Client

l  Chef-Server

 

Chef is a powerful configuration management tool in DevOps and it has good features to be the best in the market. Day by day Chef has been improving its features and delivering good results to the customer. Chef is used by worlds leading IT industries like Facebook, AWS, HP Public cloud etc. Job opportunities are increasing day by day for Chef Automation masters. To be a master in Chef Automation come to and join our Intellipaat family and be a master in it.