Say Goodbye to “It works on my machine” with Chef and Vagrant!!

by: Curt Gratz

Obligatory Who Am I

Co-owner of
Computer Know How

Member of TEAM ColdBox

Open CFML Foundation

Husband/Dad

What will we be covering?

• The Problem - “it works on my machine”
• The Solution - Chef and Vagrant
• Setting up a “Vagrant File” and "CookBooks"
• Comparing stacks quickly using Chef and Vagrant

The Problem

Solution 1: The Uber Readme

If you're lucky....

Install Party

• Webserver (Apache,Ngnix,IIS)
• CFML Engine (Adobe, Railo, Bluedragon)
• DB (MSSQL, MySQL, Oracle, etc)
• caching software (Couchbase, MongoDB, Terracotta)

Config Party (oh wait, theres more)

• Webserver
• CFML Engine
• DB Server
• cache

Setup Party (nope, not done yet)

• Get Code (clone repo, FTP, etc)
• Restore DB, run scripts
• Configure all the software to point to code

The Problem

PROBLEM

• Prone to human error
• Configuration errors
• Quickly drop out-of-sync production
• Requires special maintance
• Heavy Maintance
• Time Consuming
• Platform specfic

Solution 2: The Setup Script

If you're lucky....

Script Party

• Get Script Code (clone repo, FTP, etc)
• Configure script for your machine
• Run script

The Problem

PROBLEM

• Configuration errors
• Quickly drop out of sync production
• Requires special maintance
• Platform specfic

Solution 3: GLHF

Good Luck Have Fun....

The Problem

PROBLEM

• Not Repeatable
• Not Verifiable
• Not Isolated
• Difficult
• SLOW,SLOW,SLOW

The Solution

Chef and Vagrant....

Vagrant

A tool for creating, managing, and distributing portable development environments

Vagrant

Zero to VM in seconds

Vagrant

• CLI managment
• VM Creation
• Provisioning
• Scripted properties
• Single command setup

Vagrant

• Works on
  • Mac
  • Linux
  • Windows
  • ChromeOS

Vagrant

• Providers
  • VirtualBox
  • VMWare
  • Hyper-V
  • AWS
  • Rackspace
  • Digital Ocean
  • and many more

Chef

Chef models IT infrastructure and application delivery as code, giving you the power and flexibility to achieve awesomeness.

Chef

• Code centeric
• Scalable
• Consistant
• Efficient
• Cookbooks

SOLUTION

• Repeatable
• Verifiable
• Isolated
• Understandable
• Pretty Fast

Vagrant Basic Principles

• Boxes
• VagrantFile
• 'vagrant' CLI

vagrant CLI

• vagrant up
• vagrant destroy
• vagrant halt
• vagrant suspend

You had me at hello

OK, great, so show me!

Vagrant Whats New

• Boxes - for Windows
• rdp command
• global-status
• Hyper-V Provider
• VagrantCould https://vagrantcloud.com
• VagrantShare

Credits

• Vagrant: Vagrant Web Site
• Chef: Chef Web Site
• Mitchell Hashimoto: Automated Development Environments w/ Vagrant
• Vagrant Boxes: http://www.vagrantbox.es/

Contact Info

• Email: gratzc@compknowhow.com
• Twitter: gratzc
• Blog: www.coldbox.org/blog
• Website: www.compknowhow.com
• League of Legends: gratzc
• Skype: gratzc
• gitHub: gratzc

https://github.com/gratzc/it-works-on-my-machine-chef-vagrant