Recent years have seen infrastructure management gain popularity among both enterprises and organisations. Manual configuration and deployment are no longer required. Executing server updates over SSH within a given “for” loop is perfectly acceptable. Automation marks the dawn of a new era. Chef DevOps is a configuration management solution that many organisations are now using.
Let’s learn how to automate the Google Cloud Platform using Chef!
About the Chef
Chef is a configuration management program that maintains infrastructure by writing code instead of doing human tasks. It can be automated, tested, and deployed easily. Chef supports a variety platforms, including Windows, Ubuntu and Centos. It can also be connected to cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Open Stack. Let us first grasp Configuration Management before diving into Chef in depth.
Configuration Management
Imagine that you are a system engineer in a company and that you need to install or update hundreds of operating systems on your organisation within a day. Although this can be done manually, it can cause several problems. Some applications may crash during updates. We will also be unable to rollback previous versions. These problems can be solved by configuration management.
Configuration Management is responsible for managing all software and hardware information within an organization. It also fixes, deploys and updates the entire programme using automated methods. Configuration Management automates the work of many System Administrators and developers who are responsible for managing hundreds upon thousands of servers and applications. Some configuration management tools include Ansible, Chef, Puppet and SaltStack.
Image source – devops.inWhy Chef
Consider the following scenario: You have moved your office to a new location, and you need your system administrator to install, update and deploy software on hundreds more systems in a matter of hours. Human errors can occur and software may not work properly if the system engineer does it manually. We are now using Chef, an automated tool that converts infrastructure into code.
Chef automates the setup, deployment, administration, and reporting of applications across the network, no matter if it is cloud-based or hybrid. Chef can also be used to speed up application deployment. A chef is a great tool to speed up software delivery. Software development speed refers how quickly the program can change to meet new requirements or situations.
Benefits
Software delivery can be accelerated once your infrastructure has been automated. All software needs such as testing and developing new environments for software deployments are now more efficient.
Automating the infrastructure allows for enhanced service resilience. This monitors for potential failures and detects them before they occur, allowing for faster recovery.
Chef reduces risk and improves compliance at all levels of deployment. It reduces disputes in the manufacturing and development environments.
Chef can easily be converted to a cloud environment. Servers and infrastructure can be quickly designed, installed, and managed automatically by Chef.
Managing Cloud Environments and Data Centers: Chef can run on many platforms. Chef allows you to manage all your cloud and on-premise platforms, servers included.
Chef provides a pipeline to enable continuous deployment. This includes construction, monitoring, delivery, monitoring, troubleshooting, and delivery. This results in simplified IT operations and workflow.
Features
You can manage hundreds of servers with just a few people.
It is easy to use operating systems such as Linux, Windows, F, and F.