ChefConf 2013 - Harnessing the Power of Bare Metal with Razor and Chef Server

Policy-based, metadata-driven provisioning of bare metal and virtual servers, with a RESTful API -- what's not to love? Razor is a tool that takes raw netbooted servers, installs an operating system on them and will optionally pass those servers to a Chef or Puppet server for configuration management (CM). This talk will give an overview of Razor, its key concepts, and why you want to use it. I'll cover the CM extension API, known as Razor Brokers, and how the Chef Broker can be configured to work with any Chef Server. The flexibility in Chef and Razor allows for many possibilities, so I'll walk you through some deployment architectures as well.

Transcript

1. Harnessing the Power of Bare Metal with Razor and Chef Server Fletcher Nichol April 26, 2013 ChefConf 2013
2. > whoami
3. Fletcher Nichol
4. https://bluebox.net
5. fnichol
6. fnichol@bluebox.net
7. @fnichol
8. github.com/fnichol
11. Part 1: Razor
12. ?
13. Why do I care?
14. Jason Stowe Cycle Computing
15. “Treat your hardware like software”
16. ?
17. PXE booting
18. +
19. Policy (rules)
20. …with an API
21. “New” server
22. ☛
23. Minimal OS installation
24. (Optional) pass off to DevOps tool
25. (Optional) pass off to DevOps tool
26. (Optional) pass off to DevOps tool CM system
27. Bingo!
28. Small tool
29. One job
30. Well defined scope
31. Oh yeah, and
32. Written in Ruby
33. …and a bit of Node.js
34. Components
35. Nodes Hi, I’m a server
36. Images Your distro ISO here
37. Models OS installation tunables
38. Tags Give me a name
39. Tag Matchers Match me up
40. Policy Tell me what to be when I grow up
41. Active Model I am me (right now)
42. Honorable Mention
43. BMC (IPMI) Power cycle me, please
44. Node Lifecycle
45. Node “check in”
46. New node
47. Razor server says
48. “Go boot into this OS”
49. Razor MicroKernel
50. (…it’s a super fancy Tiny Core Linux distro)
51. Puppet facter gem!
52. Node says
53. “Hey there, here’s a bunch of stuff about me”
54. Posted to Razor Server
55. Razor has rules (policies)
56. Razor says:
57. “Can I match this node against a rule?”
58. …
59. “Yes!”
60. Node + Policy
61. Node + Policy = Active Model
62. The active model…
63. …has a state machine
64. So Razor says:
65. “Reboot, you have marching orders!”
66. Node is led through a state machine
67. …then “Razoring” is done
68. …or
69. “Can I match this node against a rule?”
70. …
71. “No” :’(
72. So Razor says:
73. “That’s cool, check back with me in while”
74. Bonus Round Are you done with me yet?
75. If we remove the active model…
76. Node is new once again
77. Part 2: Razor + Chef
78. Components, Take 2
79. Brokers The missing link
80. Installed node
81. ☛
82. Configuration Management
83. Existing Brokers?
84. Puppet? Yep
85. Simple Shell? Uh huh
86. This is #ChefConf
87. Chef? Totally!
88. Configuration Set me up
89. Chef Server URL
90. Chef Client version
91. validation.pem
92. Validation client name
93. Chef environment
94. Omnibus Chef Installer URL
95. [insert hackables here]
96. Path to chef-client
97. Optional base run list
98. Multiple brokers possible
99. Bonus Round Razor Chefness
100. Create special Chef run list tags
101. role__web_server
102. recipe__apache2
103. Broker Base + Run List Tags
104. Razor metadata
105. Razor node attributes
106. https://gist.github.com/ fnichol/5469998
107. Razor metadata, now in Chef search
108. Boom.
109. Part 3: Deployment
110. “Fully Managed” Actively managed bare metal
111. PXE boot. Forever.
112. “Bake ‘n Ship” Provision and deploy bare metal
113. Eject node from Razor VLAN
114. Involves some orchestration
115. Static Policy Rule-by-MAC
116. Predetermined fate of all nodes
117. “Dynamic Policy” Provisioning with some math
118. Policies can have a bound limit
119. Nodes can match multiple policies
120. 10 Identical Nodes
121. You say:
122. “I need 1 load balancer node”
123. “I need 2 database nodes”
124. “The rest can be app nodes”
125. Related Projects
126. Razor Project https://github.com/puppetlabs/Razor
127. Razor Wiki https://github.com/puppetlabs/Razor/wiki
128. Razor Puppet Module https://github.com/puppetlabs/Razor/wiki/Installation#puppet
129. Razor Chef Cookbook https://github.com/bbg-cookbooks/razor http://community.opscode.com/cookbooks/razor
130. razor-vagrant-lab https://github.com/blueboxgroup/razor-vagrant-lab
131. “Provisioning with Razor and Chef – An Interactive Demo” https://www.bluebox.net/about/blog/2013/01/provisioning-with-razor- and-chef-an-interactive-demo/
132. And again…
133. “Treat your hardware like software”
134. Questions? Fletcher Nichol fnichol@bluebox.net @fnichol github.com/fnichol
135. Questions? Fletcher Nichol fnichol@bluebox.net @fnichol github.com/fnichol
136. Image Credits http://www.flickr.com/photos/droth http://www.flickr.com/photos/seattlemunicipalarchives/ 8425176934//2514631535/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewgriff/4112899269/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/cooks-and-kitchens/5022997932/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/anthonycramp/4428561177/