I am looking for a tool to keep track of my servers, we use chef-solo everywhere but its hard to keep track [closed]

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I am looking for a tool to keep track of my servers, we use chef-solo everywhere but its hard to keep track. Any simple tool to keep track of servers like Spacewalk, but then simplified?

I use spacewalk for some servers I admin, but its a bit too bloated for what I want now. But how it does work great. We kickstart servers using chef-solo then register it with a static key with spacewalk. So we have a nice overview of all the servers and servers that didnt callback after X time.

We really like the concept of chef-solo and does not want chef-server for many reasons. But what is missing in our infrastructure is a simple tool, a simple web interface to keep track of the servers.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You discard the obvious answer to your question... chef-server :-)

I used to advocate chef-solo, but there have been some recent improvements in both tools and processes surrounding chef server. I now firmly believe you're not using chef properly if you omit the server.

In brief:

• Chef 11 has made massive improvements in setting up your own chef server. You can even use chef-solo to bootstrap your chef infrastructure using the chef-server cookbook.
• Bootstrapping nodes against chef server provides the tracking features you're missing. For example you can write handlers that can store pretty much anything about your nodes at runtime. This data is indexed by chef server and available via its REST API.
• Some great new tools are available for managing cookbooks. Berkshelf will manage the download and upload of cookbooks and spiceweasel will generate all those nasty knife commands.
• chef zero is being positioned as a better chef solo. I personally think it serves a different use-case, but an interesting tool especially for testing your chef recipes that require searching.