Is the chef overkill for my simple IT infrastructure?
I am a full stack developer who owns several Ruby on Rails applications. I am currently using Capistrano to provide multiple (~ 5) VPSs where my applications run, but I am looking for alternatives for a more robust automation process (Capistrano is much better suited for deployment).
The obvious choice was the chef (because I already know Ruby), but after a few days of work, he didn't realize it was the best choice: The chef's client-server architecture looks like an overkill for my needs. I don't want to start the server.
I have read the book (Reliably Deploying Rails Applications) that the chefs suggest, but when I go to the homepage and it says it is out of date and I don’t want to learn something that will become outdated quickly. , I run it, I try to create a heap of exec knife create (version 13) and says it doesn't work anymore and I have to download chefDK. I just installed a chef with my Gemfile, which was fine, but ChefDK is big, I just need something simple to deploy multiple boxes reliably. It looks like there are a lot of moving parts, things that are getting old, etc.
So, I know that Chef is great software for managing large infrastructure, but it looks like it's too complex for my use. What do you think? Are you suggesting that I continue or try something else (e.g. marketed as simpler)? Thanks to
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There is always an advantage to using orchestration just for repeatability - no matter what the scale. Once you've hooked up your testing / development workflow in Vagrantfiles, you'll never want to go back!
I've used both Chef and Ansible in the past with Rails applications, and it really depends on what you're going to do.
It's worth mentioning that both Chef and Puppet intend to be agent based (as opposed to Ansible), so it overwhelms if your scale is always small in my opinion, as there is a bit of learning curve to it.
So, I will say for your case that Ansible may be the best choice if you mainly want to automate infrastructure creation due to its simple, agentless and SSH operation.
This says that Ansible tends to be more of a sysad tool and makes the best glue, whereas the chef is better at handling specific development nuances like version control. If you are a ruby developer this can be your ally as it is code driven.
I would look at this:
I am using a hosting provider and want to set up multiple servers, then Ansible will be my choice.
If I run a hosting provider and need to manage a very large number of servers, then Puppet is my choice.
If I am running a complex set of integrated web applications with a decent sized software development team then Chef is my choice.
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So chef-solo is not deprecated, we are still tracking down some older docs that claim to be the case.
Deploying a rails solo and Berkshelf app is pretty easy, I have an example recipe at https://github.com/poise/application_examples/blob/master/recipes/todo_rails.rb
As far as this is concerned, it is too complicated that it is difficult to answer. That's a lot to learn, but the actual overhead of extra stuff in your stack isn't that big, so it's mostly about whether you need the time to learn how to chef.
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