Installing and configuring multi-node systems are common enterprise tasks that can require a tremendous amount of time and resources. As technology continues to evolve, so will the need to effectively deploy and manage these systems. Chef and CloudBolt work together to simplify the installation, configuration, and ongoing compliance, greatly increasing the scalability and stability of these complex systems.
Recently, I co-presented a live webinar with Nick Edema, a Cloud Engineer at CloudBolt. Watch a recording of the presentation below to see a demo of how to use Chef Automate with CloudBolt blueprints to quickly stand up your systems. You’ll see us provision machines with CloudBolt, apply their configuration with Chef cookbooks, and validate their compliance with InSpec profiles.
When you open up the CloudBolt portal, you can navigate to your blueprints configuration. Once you’ve added the configuration management connector for Chef, you can import your cookbooks, roles, and environments. As part of your CloudBolt blueprint you can then add the appropriate configuration and audit cookbooks and roles to your given server blueprint. By doing this we are now able to spin up new machines that will automatically come online with the appropriate configuration and auditing capabilities, in whichever cloud environment you defined in your blueprint.
When a new machine is spun up from CloudBolt, it will automatically install the Chef Client and bootstrap with the defined runlist. Your new servers will come online and configure themselves as part of their provisioning lifecycle. Combined with InSpec audit cookbooks, you can easily assert the compliance of these new servers in your fleet as well.
By equipping yourself with these tools, you can enable one click deployments and allow any member of your team to quickly spin up new or update existing environments. You can also re-point your blueprints to other cloud or datacenter providers to allow for easy migration, and customize your deployment with tunable attributes as well. Combining Chef and CloudBolt gives you great flexibility in deployment, while ensuring consistent configurations and continued compliance.
Ready to start delivering compliant systems? We’ve got just the things to give you a leg-up!