Configuration Management with Amazon EC2 and Opscode Chef

Do you run your applications in the Amazon cloud? If so, you have likely experienced that the Amazon cloud makes it easy to provision new servers but does not help much with installation and management. The server installation process in the cloud is often the same as in traditional hardware based environments. The creation of multi-server environments in the cloud is even harder than in traditional ones because of the cloud’s dynamic nature. As a result, many companies do not use the full potential of the cloud and its capabilities to expand or shrink their infrastructure on demand.

Cloud Automation is one solution for this problem. Opscode Chef is a configuration management tool which allows the automated provisioning of new servers, the automated (unattended) installation of servers, and the configuration of multi-server environments (integration). Additionally, Opscode provides a community website with pre-built components (called cookbooks) which automate the installation of the most common server applications and packages.

This training provides an overview of the Opscode Chef platform and gives and introduction on the usage of pre-built cookbooks and how to extend them. Attendees will be guided through a hands-on example of a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) stack creation in a multi-server environment. Lessons learned can be easily applied to other technology stacks which support languages (i.e. Ruby, Python, and Java), webservers (i.e. lighttpd and nginx), and databases (i.e. Postgres).

Course Content

•        Configuration Management with Chef

•        Overview: Configuration Management

•        Concept of Chef Roles, Cookbooks and Recipes

•        Chef server processes / Opscode hosted Chef server

•        Security

•        How to find Cookbooks

•        Environment (Dev, QA, Production) separation

•        Anatomy of a Chef-client run

•        Amazon EC2

•        Mini-Introduction to EC2

•        EC2-Tool configuration and account credentials

•        AWS Console

•        Configuration of the EC2 Firewall: Security Groups

•        Chef installation & configuration

•        Hosted Chef server: Account creation

•        Local Chef-client installation

•        Client configuration: Opscode server credentials and Amazon EC2 account credentials

•        Chef-client anatomy

•        Directory structure of a chef-repository

•        Download of community Cookbooks

•        Knife: Introduction into the universal Chef tool

•        Creation of server roles

•        Upload of assets to the Chef server

•        Query information from the Chef server

•        Start of the first EC2 server instance configured with Chef

•        Ruby basics

•        Ruby for Chef users

•        Use predefined cookbooks

•        Explore the Apache2 community cookbook

•        Chef Resource - Building blocks for defining configurations

•        Actions

•        Conditions

•        Notifications

•        File, Directory

•        Linux package management

•        Linux services

•        Script and command-line execution

•        Templates

•        Chef Attributes - Parameterization of configurations

•        Where to define attributes: Attributes in cookbooks, recipes and roles

•        Attribute types and attribute precedence

•        Attribute storage in the Chef server

•        Automatic attribute generation with Ohai

•        LAMP stack I: All-in-one server

•        Download of required cookbooks

•        Role definition

•        Deployment of an all-in-one server

•        LAMP stack II: Two server scenario

•        Role definition for a multi-server environment

•        Server integration I: Automated creation of MySQL GRANTS for the webserver

•        Server integration II: Automated integration of the database-server into the webserver

•        LAMP stack III: Load balanced scenario

•        Automated Amazon ELB (Elastic Load Balancer) configuration for two or more Apache webservers

•        Outlook

•        Automated server monitoring with Nagios and Munin

•        Instance backup and database backup solutions

•        Creation of temporary environments for load-testing and QA

•        Scheduled (cron based) start and stop of multi-server environments

Student Prerequisites

•        Laptop with Wireless LAN, 2GB RAM and 10 GB free hard disk space

•        Installed VMWare Player - a VMWare virtual machine image with pre-installed software will be provided
Windows/Linux: http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ (free download)
OS X: https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=fusion (VMWare Fusion 30 day trial)

•        A valid Amazon EC2 account (please register before the course: http://aws.amazon.com/)

•        Linux knowledge

Length

1 Day (9am - 6pm)

Location

hosted by: Q Connects
6080 Center Drive
6th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90045

Tickets

•        Tickets can be ordered only via eventbrite.com

•        Tickets are limited to two tickets per company

More Information: info@cloudtrainings.com