Chef Essentials: Mastering the Basics of Config Management

Name: Chef Essentials: Mastering the Basics of Config Management
Rating: 4.7 (675 reviews)

Automate your server configuration and management. Accelerate your career. Master the Chef Essentials

Highest Rated

Created byAlex Glover

Last updated 6/2017

English

What you'll learn

Understand Chef terminology and concepts
Automate server configuration with Chef recipes and cookbooks
Understand configuration management concepts such as idempotence
Leverage Erubis templates for dynamically configuring servers and applications
Implement attributes and understand precedence

Course content

2 sections • 18 lectures • 3h 2m total length

Introduction7:13
In this lecture I will introduce myself as the lecturer, discuss some practical and career benefits of learning Chef, and go over a high-level syllabus for the course.
Lab Setup and Requirements4:05
In this lecture, we'll review the requirements for our lab that we will use for the rest of our Chef tutorials and training. Please note that this course is heavily focused on Linux and the video lectures and labs will be based on using an Ubuntu. The concepts can be carried over and applied to other Linux distros and even Windows, but our examples will be limited to Ubuntu.
Lab Setup - Cloud9 (Optional)6:13
In this lecture, we'll walk through setting up Cloud9 for your use as lab environment. This will be the environment that the instructor uses for all of the Chef tutorials and labs in this course, so this is the recommended lab setup. Cloud9 is all you need for this course.
Configuration Management and Chef Concepts13:06
In this lecture, we'll discuss configuration management concepts and theory in the abstract, as well as review how specifically those configuration management concepts are implemented with Chef. We will briefly review the concept of declarative programming, explain idempotence, and review some Chef-specific terminology.

Hello World Pre-Lab4:03
Hello World10:09
In this lecture and lab, we'll jumpstart the hands on labs section with a walk through of our first Chef resource executions and recipe writing. This Chef tutorial will include execution of individual Chef resources, writing our first stand-alone recipe, and demonstrating some of the configuration management concepts we discussed earlier.
Lab: Hello World Part 217:53
Hello World Quiz
Resources Pre-Lab5:00
In this pre-lab, we'll take a deep dive into resources, how they work cross-platform, and resource properties in preparation for our lab. The lab will be a Chef tutorial on how to use resources.
Resources14:46
In this lab, we'll walk through a Chef tutorial on how to use resources and apply what we've learned in the pre-lab.
Resources Quiz
Cookbooks and chef-client Pre-Lab6:33
Cookbooks and chef-client11:34
In this lecture and lab, we'll review cookbooks and cookbook directory structure, outline cookbook components, and do a Chef tutorial on how to use chef-client instead of chef-apply.
Cookbooks and chef-client Quiz
Templates and cookbook_file Pre-Lab13:39
Templates and cookbook_file Lab20:01
In this lecture and lab, we'll review the Erubis template engine and template syntax, the cookbook_file resource, and walk through a Chef tutorial demonstrating how to use both of these Chef elements.
Templates and cookbook_file Quiz
Attributes Pre-Lab12:55
Attributes Lab11:38
In this lecture and lab, we'll discuss attribute use cases, precedence, inheritance, and do a Chef tutorial together demonstrating how to use attributes in your recipes and attribute precedence.
Attributes Quiz
Run-lists Pre-Lab2:45
Run-lists Lab10:07
In this lecture and lab, we'll discuss how to use run-lists instead of passing the override-run-list argument to the chef-client, allowing us to specify multiple recipes, cookbooks, and even override attributes.
Conclusion10:27
A few quick reminders and a thank you to all of my students.

Requirements

Students should already be somewhat familiar with Linux command line
Students should be comfortable editing text files from the command line

Description

Are you looking to advance your IT career? Do you want to automate your System Administrator tasks on-prem or in the cloud so you can focus on the value-add problems? Would your organization benefit from faster, standardized, and predictable server automation? Are you trying to transform your legacy IT services into a DevOps model?

Then you need to take this course and start taking advantage of this amazing tool!

The Chef Essentials course will teach you the fundamentals of Chef, including how to install the Chef Development Kit, writing cookbooks and recipes, how to use recipe sub-components, and how to test your recipes locally.

This course includes reference materials and simple examples designed to help you build a solid foundation of Chef and configuration management knowledge. The course is primarily in video lecture format, but also includes quizzes throughout the course to check your comprehension and hands on projects to build real world experience.

It will take you roughly one week to accomplish Chef Essentials, depending on how much time you can dedicate to the course each day. The course is structured in two major sections, an Overview section and a Deep Dive section. The Overview section is designed to demonstrate the power of Chef, explain fundamental concepts, and explain Chef-centric terminology. The Deep Dive section will be comprised of lectures and hands on labs to teach you about:

Cookbooks
Recipes, including dependencies and 'include' statements
Templates
Attributes
Libraries
Troubleshooting

Chef experience can be a differentiator when looking for a new role and make you invaluable in your current position. Chef can automate your server configuration and is a crucial piece of any delivery toolchain. Chef provides the simple, reliable automation you need for configuration management, and this course provides the quickest path to leveraging Chef.

I look forward to you joining my course.

Who this course is for:

This course is meant for entry-level IT professionals with some basic Linux system administration experience and an interest in automation. No formal development or programming experience is necessary. If you are looking for Chef Server administration or advanced Chef Development Kit training, then please see my other Chef courses (coming soon!)

Chef Essentials: Mastering the Basics of Config Management

What you'll learn

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Course content

Introduction, Setup, and Concepts4 lectures • 31min

Hands On Labs14 lectures • 2hr 32min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: