Testing "Hardware" Cookbooks with Kitchen

Slides from my Chef Conf Online 2021 presentation

1. Testing “hardware” cookbooks with kitchen Joe Nuspl Principal Engineer, Workday
2. 2 • Based in Portland, OR • DevOpsDays Portland organizer • Started with chef-0.8.2 on CentOS 5.3 • https://supermarket.chef.io/cookbooks/zap • http://nvwls.github.io/ • @JoeNuspl Who am I?
3. 3 http://fredrikdesigns.com/portfolio/growly-bear-metal/
4. 4 https://www.easytechjunkie.com/what-is-a-rack-server.htm
5. 5 All software should be tested
6. 6 “I need hardware to test the cookbook”
7. 7 Wrong! “I need hardware to test the cookbook”
8. 8 What are you trying to test?
10. 10 Trust the lower layers, test your layer
11. 11 Correct code can fail
12. 12 • Client does not have access to server • Server does not export the volume to that client • Server is down for maintenance Why could this fail?
13. 13 • There is nothing the recipe could do to fix the failure • Focus on the real purpose of the code • Avoid the failure The recipe is correct
14. 14 What to test?
15. 15 • /etc/fstab • /proc/mounts Persistent Point in time State
16. 16 • Did the cookbook configure things? • /etc/fstab • Focus on persistent What type of testing? • Does this server fulfill its purpose? • /proc/mounts • Focus on state Integration Compliance
17. 17 Special case kitchen?
18. 18 Use a handler to override behavior
19. 19 • https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feign • to give a false appearance of : induce as a false impression feign
20. 20 feign::nfs-mount
21. 21 Converges!
22. 22 • Usually means only applicable on a particular hardware platform • Not that it CAN only run on that platform Hardware specific recipes
23. 23 hw::dell
24. 24 Verifies under dokken
25. 25 Hardware logic
26. 26 Nothing is converged
27. 27 feign::dell
28. 28 feign::hp
29. 29 • ProLiant_DL380_Gen9 vs ProLiant_DL380_Gen10 • PowerEdge_R640 vs PowerEdge_R740xd Model based logic
30. 30 Location specific recipes
32. 32 • Docker4Mac lacks autofs support • Need to mock the autofs service Test environment limitations
34. 34 Include (some) test support in utility cookbooks
35. 35 • https://github.com/bblimke/webmock webmock
38. 38 https://www.homelectrical.com/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/images/product/blg/blg- woke_up_late.jpg Flawed design?
39. 39 • https://github.com/nvwls/feign • https://github.com/nvwls/hw • https://github.com/nvwls/chefconf21 • https://nvwls.github.io/ Thank you!