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