Chef: Automate server configuration and deployment by modeling it in code

Chef is an open source Configuration Management tool that launches servers, automates install of the latest updates, automates your environment's software config, and much more all with a single command.

If you model your infrastructure as code, your infrastructure's entire state becomes instantly reproducible from your local command line. If a server goes bad, instead of struggling to fix it, you can merely re-deploy it using Chef and get it to the exact state it's supposed to be in.  Chef code is written in Ruby, and can be tested and version-controlled like any other part of your source code.  Used well, it can make day-to-day server management and deployment a "non-event."

In this session, I'll introduce you to Chef, walk through the key concepts you need to know to start using it, and discuss different options for leveraging Chef. Time permitting, we will build our very own "cookbook" (chef-speak for instructions a server will execute).