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hands-on lab

Using Chef Solo on Linux for Azure

Difficulty: Beginner
Duration: Up to 1 hour and 30 minutes
Students: 153
Rating: 4.6/5
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Description

Lab Overview

The popular configuration management tool Chef is typically used in a client-server architecture where clients check a centralized server for configuration updates. Chef Solo brings most of the benefits of Chef to a single server. All of the concepts of Chef apply to Chef Solo: cookbooks, recipes, attributes, templates, roles, etc. In this Lab, you will gain experience with each of those concepts as you configure a Linux virtual machine in Azure using Chef Solo.

Lab Objectives

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

  • Configure a Chef node in Azure using Chef Solo
  • Write Chef cookbooks and recipes
  • Use Chef attributes and templates to generalize your cookbooks
  • Create Chef roles to define Chef node functions 

Lab Prerequisites

You should be familiar with the following:

  • Chef concepts
  • Working on the command line in Linux
  • Ruby programming basics are beneficial, but not required

Lab Environment

Before completing the lab instructions the environment will look as follows:

After completing the lab instructions the environment should look similar to:

Updates

August 7th, 2024 - Upgraded VM Image, Chef Solo, instructions and screenshots to reflect the latest UI

December 23rd, 2020 - Upgraded the VM SKU used in the lab

May 5th, 2020 - Added a validation check function to check the work done in the lab

April 2nd, 2020 - Updated screenshots to match the latest experience

Covered topics

Microsoft Azure
DevOps for Azure
Compute for Azure
Azure Linux Virtual Machines
Virtualization for Azure
Chef
Virtualization
Management
DevOps
Compute
Hands-on Lab UUID

Lab steps

Logging in to the Microsoft Azure Portal
Connecting to the Lab Provisioned Azure Virtual Machine
Setting Up Chef Solo on Linux (Azure)
Running Your First Recipes with Chef Solo
Staying Organized with Cookbook Files
Notifying Chef Resources of Changes
Using Attributes and Templates in Your Cookbooks
Defining Chef Node Functions with Roles - Azure

Lab Rules