Chapter 1. Introduction to Chef and Chef-Solo

Chef is a configuration management system to automate the process of deploying servers to any physical, virtual, or cloud location. Each setup involves the basic structure with one Chef server and different nodes managed by the chef-client. Chef infrastructure is managed by Ruby code and it allows you to test, build, and replicate your infrastructure.

This chapter will guide you through the basics of Chef and how it can help you in building an infrastructure. We will discuss Chef, Chef-Solo, and address some common problems in building an infrastructure and how Chef can help us to solve these problems.

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

• Chef explanations and concepts
• Chef-Solo
• Terminology for Chef
• Different use cases
• Concepts