• Online, Self-Paced
Course Description

The best practices of using a Chef Server are directly related to the reusability of cookbook recipes and components. This course will focus on the effective use of community cookbooks with a Chef server.

Learning Objectives

The Chef Supermarket

  • start the course
  • describe the reusability of Chef cookbooks and best practices around utilizing community code
  • search for cookbooks on supermarket.chef.io
  • distinguish the differences between library and application cookbooks

Wrapper Cookbooks

  • distinguish why community cookbooks should be called as dependencies instead of forking upstream code bases
  • configure and install dependencies in the metadata file with berkshelf

Cookbook Dependencies

  • manage Chef server cookbook versions with berkshelf
  • configure the Berksfile to point at a local dependency instead of a Chef Supermarket dependency

Node Attribute Precedence

  • use node attribute precedence when overwriting cookbook attribute values
  • assign node attributes at the role or environment level
  • identify the limitations of using roles and explain the purpose of a role cookbook

The Chef-client Cookbook

  • configure the chef-client as a service with a community cookbook
  • configure the logging location on a node directly or as a node attribute with the chef-client cookbook

Practice: Configuring a Load Balancer

  • configure a wrapper for the test_haproxy community cookbook to redirect traffic to a simple web server

Framework Connections

The materials within this course focus on the Knowledge Skills and Abilities (KSAs) identified within the Specialty Areas listed below. Click to view Specialty Area details within the interactive National Cybersecurity Workforce Framework.