chef environment

Chef Environment

An environment is a way to map an organization real-life workflow to what can be configured and managed using the chef server, Apply different cookbook versions to specific environment Define environment level attributes Environments allow sharing of cookbooks within an organization

Creating chef Environment

Environment information can be stored in json file or .rb files, Environment will be located in chef-repo/environments

Example dev.rb

name “dev”

description “Development environment”

cookbook “security”,”=0.1.0”

cookbook”motd”,”=0.2.0”

override_attributes({

“author” =>{

“name” => true

}

})

Environment Attributes

Two types of attribute precedence can be set on the environment level

*Default a default attribute defined in the environment will take precedence over a default attribute defined in a cookbook attribute file.

*Override has higher precedence than the default, force_default, and norm

Create and configure Environment

Create a directory for environments and create a ruby file for the environment (development) as shown below:

#mkdir environments

#ls

cookbooks data_bags environments README.md roles

#cd environments/

#cat environment

name "dev"

description "This is the development environment" 

cookbook "apache", "= 0.1.5" 

override_attributes({

"author" => {

"name" => "my new auther name"

}

})

Command to verify all environments,

# knife environment list -w

_default: https://chefserver.zippyops.com/organizations/zcs/environments/_default

Current one API environment is available. Now we can create our new environment,

# knife environment from file dev.rb 

Updated Environment dev

Now go to the chef server console, click on “Policy” and then check the environment option,

There to be added dev environment. all the nodes are added default environment

Relevant Blogs: 

Chef Vsphere Provisioning 

chef adding nodes 

Manage linux package in puppet 

Zabbix Custom scripts