Chef is a fantastic tool, but it can be scary to some as they dig in to get the most out of it. The great news is we are helping to simplify Chef by removing the complexity of deploying Chef cookbooks, making them easily accessible to everyone. We see three main areas where Chef can be simplified: 1. Situation: Deploying a Chef Cookbook to an App in the Cloud 2. Situation: Steps to Deploying a Chef Cookbook to an App in the Cloud 3. Situation: Interconnecting Chef Roles View our latest Slideshare to see an overview of the situation, the problem for many users and how it can be easily solved.

1. A Simplified Guide to
CHEF.IORemove the complexity of deploying Chef
cookbooks, making them easily accessible
to everyone

2. Situation: Deploying a Chef Cookbook to
an App in the Cloud
Situation: Interconnecting Chef Roles
Situation: Auto-scaling with Chef
Three Chef Situations to Simplify

3. Situation 1:
Deploying a Chef Cookbook to an
in the Cloud

4. • Your goal is to deploy a Chef cookbook to an application in the
cloud.
• You have the cookbook from the Chef Supermarket, or your
own, which describes an application that is specific to you.
• The Chef cookbook contains all the steps to get your
application up and running, so it should be an easy task, right?

5. It isn’t an easy task.

6. Steps to Deploying a
Chef Cookbook to an
App in the Cloud
Phew that’s a lot.
1. Set up a Chef infrastructure, namely a Chef server & a client.
2. Install and set up a Chef server, or alternatively subscribe to
Hosted Chef.
3. Make sure your selected cookbook is available on the Chef
server, and configure the role for your application properly
including specific variables (the “attributes”) that your application
needs, for example the password of the database.
4. The Chef client will have to run on the cloud node that will host
your application.
5. Create this node on your preferred cloud.
6. Make a choice between cloud providers.
7. Use either the cloud provider’s control panel, API or maybe Chef
knife with an appropriate plugin to create it, with the required
compute and storage resources.
8. Install the Chef client on the cloud node, either manually or by
utilizing the knife bootstrap command.
9. Assign the cloud node to the role specified earlier, and execute
the role to initiate the bootstrap operations.
10. If you need to register your node to extra services like New Relic
for monitoring or SumoLogic for machine data analytics, you
need to either modify your cookbook or, if you’re not comfortable
with it, run custom bootstrap scripts manually.

7. After all those steps and time, your vanilla cloud node
has finally become your desired application.

8. But you still have more work to do...

9. Problem:
Wasted Time and Resource
• Your application probably
needs to serve some kind of
web workload, so you have
one more step: dig for the IP
address that was assigned by
the cloud provider and map it
to a DNS entry.
(You’ll probably use yet another
third party management console)

10. • Now you need to repeat the last
part of this process for every cloud
node that needs to be part of that
role.
• If you have an array of servers
performing the same role, this
process needs to be completed
manually each time you want to
grow the array.

11. Cut down this time
consuming and
resource hungry
process.

12. Easily
Deploy a
Chef
Cookbook
to an App
in the
Cloud
SOLUTION:

13. Use to deliver what goes
between a cookbook and a fully deployed
application in the cloud.
is the fastest way to deploy and
automate applications consistently across multiple
clouds.
Much of this automation comes from its deep
integration with Chef.

14. 1. Select or upload a cookbook
2. Create and configure a blueprint from your chosen recipe
3. Spin up server from blueprint on chosen cloud provider in chosen
geography
– Or spin up multiple identical servers (server array) from same blueprint,
automatically added to the embedded load balancer pool
4. Bootstrap the server(s)
5. Automatically install and register agents e.g. New Relic
6. Map servers to embedded geo-DNS servers with domain of choice
Solution: Flexiant Concerto

15. Chef Cookbook is easily
deployed to an app in the
cloud.

16. Situation 2:
Interconnecting Chef Roles

17. • You need your
application to
scale to meet
unpredictable
workload
demand.
• With the cloud,
you can easily
create all the
pieces required to
build a scalable
application.

18. Problem:
Complexity
All of this creates a great deal
of complexity that is only going
to grow as you continue to
scale.
All components need to talk to
each other to make sure the
application as a whole is going
to work. Your application
requires a clearly defined
topology.

19. CHEF
Chef is a big help.
Chef roles automate the application blueprinting,
managing the configuration of the infrastructure
components.
It significantly reduces the admin overhead required.

20. • Even with the help of
Chef, interconnecting all
the various roles is a big
project.
• Chef’s remit doesn’t
include the big picture
and the whole
application topology.
Problem:
Solving Complexity is
No SmallTask

21. Ensure the
communication
between roles.

22. Problem:
Ensure the
communication
between roles.
Phew that’s a lot.
Thoughts?
1. Ensure Chef is working and that each node that makes your
application is properly associated to its role.
2. Configure roles and back them with the relevant cookbooks from
the Chef Supermarket, or write them yourself.
3. Once all roles have been executed and your nodes are up and
running, you need to make sure that each node, representing a
component of your application, is interconnected with the others.
4. Application servers need to be informed of where the database
or the cache layer is, and this requires your understanding of the
IP address given by the cloud provider as well as a specific
configuration change to each application server. Chef, again, can
help. You would simply need to change the role configuration and
force the convergence. This will automatically update all affected
nodes and establish the required connection.
5. Have your application automatically scale to handle temporary
peaks. This is where you have a problem.
6. When all the above needs to happen automatically, service
discovery and automatic interconnection of roles is problematic.
And the more nodes you have in your application topology, the
bigger an issue this becomes.

23. Solution: Bypass the Manual Steps
with Flexiant Concerto
1. Select or upload a cookbook
2. Automatically
– Spin up servers
– Install Chef
– Execute and converge roles
– Map IP address to embedded
geo-DNS service
3. Bootstrap nodes with a click
4. Scale the application
automatically:
– Spin up servers
– Interconnect roles
– Include in load balancing pools

24. Easily automate the
communication of Chef roles with
Flexiant Concerto.

25. Situation 3:
Auto-scaling with Chef

26. You have deployed a multi-tier web
application in the cloud, with each tier made
up of a few servers. As demand fluctuates,
you’ll either have:
• Too little server resource and your
user’s experience will suffer
• Too much and you are over provisioning and
over spending on infrastructure.

27. • Manual application performance tracking to
adjust infrastructure manually is a waste of
admin resource.
• You need an auto-scaling solution so you
select Chef so your application can be easily
replicable.

28. CHEF
itself is not enough.

29. You Need Auto-
Scaling
• You Need a Monitoring
Solution
• You Need to React to
Metrics
• You Need to Scale Up
AND Down
• You Need Powerful
Auto-scaling for
Infrastructure
Resources

30. Solution: Infrastructure is Chef
Powered, Apps Easily Replicable and
Auto-Scaled
1. Configure template based on Chef role with
New Relic license key
− Concerto monitors application performance
− Generates Apdex score
2. Configure rules within Concerto for the
Apdex scores at which to scale out and in
3. Implement Concerto auto-scaling:
− When Apdex score goes below scale out
threshold, new servers are spun up to optimize
performance
− When Apdex score goes above scale in
threshold, surplus servers are killed off to
control costs

31. delivers everything you need for your
application to continue to run successfully
and to address the increased demand,
thus ensuring that
user experience is optimal.

32. With Flexiant Concerto, prepare your
application on the right foundations like
Chef, gathering the most reliable data with
New Relic, allowing you to finely tune your
auto-scaling policy.

33. Flexiant Concerto gives you an intuitive UI
and an API to deliver the orchestration
required to transform amazingChef
cookbooks into a fully distributed and
scalable application topology.

34. Get your job done better
by automating repetitive
tasks across the best
cloud for your project.
Get the Job Done
Hate getting locked in to
one cloud?Take control by
using whatever cloud you
want to get the best price,
performance or
geographical reach based
on what you want.
Got an idea? Imagine new
products and deploy them
quickly to deliver value
faster. Use continuous
integration/ continuous
delivery across multiple
clouds to achieve quick
application development.
Be Free Imagine and Innovate

35. What’s the impact Flexiant Concerto has on overall
organizational performance: profitability, market
share and productivity?
Low risk
Remove barriers to productivity by automating core
and non-core components, consistently across the
best cloud for the project/department/business
Low cost
High productivity
Market share
Innovate for your business, not for the technology
to run it
No wasted financial resources on in-house
development
No vendor lock-in

36. Don’t waste time and expense
Get cloud freedom today. Build, deploy and manage
applications across multiple clouds today with
Flexiant Concerto.
Save yourself the wasted time and expense of doing
nothing or doing it yourself by using a solution to
deploy and automate applications consistently
across multiple clouds.

37. Try Flexiant Concerto
today!
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More
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Started
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