We are constantly asked to deliver our infrastructure faster at what seems like a compromise of its quality. Waiting until it’s time to deploy into production is not the moment to see if the cookbooks we have written will work. By adopting a test driven approach to cookbook development we quickly receive feedback through simple […]
Read MoreCategory: chefdk
Bootstrapping Nodes in Bulk
Bootstrapping the chef-client on many nodes in bulk can present a challenge. Using the traditional bootstrapping tools included with the ChefDK (knife bootstrap) to install and register the chef-client on a bulk number (hundreds or thousands) of nodes will result in exhausting resources on the bastion host before your operations are complete, including CPU, memory, […]
Read MoreChef Automate release – July 2017
Chef Automate is officially one year old as of this latest release (1.5.46). Happy birthday, Chef Automate! There are a number of things to highlight this release. Compliance Views Better insight of compliance state and profile data is now available by default in the Chef Automate GUI. The new views are available from the top-level navigation […]
Read MoreChef DK 2.0 Released
We’re delighted to announce the release of Chef DK 2.0. This release updates many of the tools included in Chef DK, which provides more features and functionality, and adds support for partner integrations. Chef DK 2.0 contains Chef Client 13.2, and is the best way to develop, validate, and deploy Chef cookbooks. We’ve included the […]
Read MoreFresh New Stuff
You may have noticed over the last few months that a new series of videos has been appearing on the Chef Youtube channel. We’ve started a new series of videos called Fresh New Stuff to show off some of the fun stuff we’ve been working on. Our goal is to show off new and interesting functionality […]
Read MoreChef Automate’s New Release Cadence
Over the last year, we’ve adopted a monthly release cadence for chef-client and chefdk. That regular cadence has served us well, allowing users to predictably plan for and schedule upgrades. Today, we’re pleased to announce that Chef Automate will follow suit and also adopt a monthly release cadence. This change allows customers to more easily […]
Read MoreWebinars that rocked in 2016
Chef webinars are a great way to learn about new products, integrations, and build your skills as a Chef practitioner. In 2016, we presented more than 30 live webinars to thousands of attendees across the globe. My favorite part of these presentations is the interaction between Chef experts and our live audience members who participate in the Q&A […]
Read MoreTest Kitchen: Driver caching mechanism
I’m happy to announce a new driver caching mechanism for Test Kitchen. You can use it with provisioners to cache downloads and other files between provisions. For people who use the kitchen-vagrant driver to run Chef, we’ve introduced local caching of the chef-client packages. As a result, this change cuts as much as 3 minutes per VM […]
Read MoreTest Ohai Plugins with ChefSpec and InSpec
You can test your custom Ohai plugins with ChefSpec using the chefspec-ohai gem, and with InSpec in Test Kitchen. This frees you from the traditionally difficult task of debugging a failing Ohai plugin. In this post, I’ll focus solely on testing an Ohai plugin. If you are interested in a complete tutorial that walks through the process of […]
Read MoreWatch: Writing Great Unit Tests with ChefSpec
On March 23rd, I presented a live webinar on Writing Great Unit Tests. Watch the recording below to hear me explain how to write unit tests and how they apply to the domain of cookbook development. You’ll see me demonstrate how to build cookbooks by using a test-driven approach. At the end of the presentation, […]
Read More