Slides from 08-27-2013 Opscode webinar on using Chef to automate your Microsoft Windows-based infrastructure, including a live demo of Windows automation and a review of the latest and greatest resources available for running Chef with Windows-based infrastructure.

1. Webinar:
Cooking with Chef on Microsoft Windows
Julian C. Dunn
Senior Consultant, Opscode, Inc.
<jdunn@opscode.com>

2. Introduction to Opscode and Chef

3. What is Chef?
Recipes and Cookbooks
that describe and deliver code.
Chef enables people to easily build &
manage complex & dynamic applications
at massive scale.
• New model for describing infrastructure that
promotes reuse
• Programmatically provision and configure
• Reconstruct business from code repository,
data backup, and bare metal resources
Chef is an IT automation platform for developers & systems engineers to continuously
define, build, and manage infrastructure.
CHEF USES:

4. Chef and Windows Support Milestones
• May 2011 – Knife plugin for Windows announced
• Oct 2011 – PowerShell, IIS, SQL Server, and Windows cookbooks
• Dec 2011 – Chef Client Installer MSI for Microsoft Windows
• Feb 2012 – Integration of the registry_key resource into core Chef
from the Windows cookbook
• Aug 2013 – Chef 11.6.0 release. PowerShell and Batch scripting
integrated into core Chef. Chef Client released as Windows service
• Aug 2013 - PowerShell Desired State Configuration support announced
(for delivery later in 2013)

5. Notable Chef Customers on Windows

6. Automating a .NET App on Windows

7. Automating a .NET App on Windows
• The app: nopCommerce Shopping Cart
solution (www.nopcommerce.com)
• ASP.NET with SQL Server backend
• Available through WebPI
• WebPI install assumes a lot, however
• Full-featured app suitable to show off
Chef resources on Windows

8. Resources Automated in this Demo
• Installing Windows Features and Roles
• IIS app pool
• IIS site
• IIS app
• Registry settings
• Deploying files onto the system
• Unzipping files
• Windows filesystem rights management

9. Provisioning with Chef
• Beta of the Azure plugin for Chef
• Request new VM from Azure API
• Bootstrap it over WinRM
• Install and start Chef
• Register with Chef server
• Run through the “run list”
• Instant infrastructure with one command

10. Video

11. The Recipe Code

12. nopCommerce Recipe Code: Install IIS, ASP.NET 4.5

13. nopCommerce Recipe Code: Install nopCommerce

14. nopCommerce Recipe Code: Set up IIS Site, App Pool, App

15. Other Recipe Code You Might Have Noticed
cookbook_file 'C:WindowsSystem32oemlogo.bmp' do
source node['windowshacks']['oeminfo']['logofile']
rights :read, "Everyone"
action :create
end
registry_key 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionOEMInformation' do
values [{:name => 'Logo', :type => :string, :data => 'C:WindowsSystem32oemlogo.bmp'},
{:name => 'Manufacturer', :type => :string, :data =>
node['windowshacks']['oeminfo']['manufacturer']},
{:name => 'SupportHours', :type => :string, :data =>
node['windowshacks']['oeminfo']['supporthours']},
{:name => 'SupportPhone', :type => :string, :data =>
node['windowshacks']['oeminfo']['supportphone']},
{:name => 'SupportURL', :type => :string, :data =>
node['windowshacks']['oeminfo']['supporturl']}]
action :create
end

16. The Result

17. Overview of Chef Resources on
Windows

18. Chef Resources on Windows: Same as UNIX/Linux
• file, remote_file, cookbook_file,
template
• directory, remote_directory
• user, group
• mount (can take CIFS paths)
• env
• service
• execute
• ruby_block
• many others...
Photo Credit: L. Allen Brewer

19. Windows-Only Resources
• registry_key (new in Chef 11.0.0)
• powershell_script (new in Chef 11.6.0)
• batch (new in Chef 11.6.0)
• Automatic architecture handling (:i386 vs.
:x86_64)
• Automatic Windows filesystem redirector
handling (Wow64)
• Long-term roadmap: move more resources
to core and out of „windows‟ cookbook

20. Windows-Only Cookbooks
• By Opscode:
• 7-zip
• iis
• powershell
• sql_server
• webpi
• windows
• wix
• Many others in the community
• couchbase
• ms_dotnet45
• (to name but a few) Photo Credit: Marc Falardeau

21. registry_key example
# Set system’s proxy settings to be the same as used for Chef
proxy = URI.parse(Chef::Config[:http_proxy])
registry_key 'HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionInternet Settings' do
values [{:name => 'ProxyEnable', :type => :reg_dword, :data => 1},
{:name => 'ProxyServer', :data => "#{proxy.host}:#{proxy.port}"},
{:name => 'ProxyOverride', :type => :reg_string, :data => '<local>'}]
action :create
end

22. powershell_script example
powershell_script "rename hostname" do
code <<-EOH
$computer_name = Get-Content env:computername
$new_name = 'test-hostname'
$sysInfo = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ComputerSystem
$sysInfo.Rename($new_name)
EOH
end

23. Registry Idempotency Helpers
• Resources like powershell_script are not idempotent by default
• We provide some helpers for checking the registry:
• registry_data_exists?
• registry_get_subkeys
• registry_get_values
• registry_has_subkeys?
• registry_key_exists?
• registry_value_exists?

24. Special File and Directory Permissions Handling on Windows
• Parameters that don‟t make sense are
ignored
• DOMAINuser, DOMAINgroup work
• Filesystem ACLs are different on Windows
• mode parameter semantics
• rights parameter only for Windows

25. The “windows” cookbook
• The windows cookbook includes a number of
resources and providers, and helper
libraries.
• See https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/windows
for a full list
• Highlights:
• windows_auto_run
• windows_feature
• windows_package
• windows_path
• windows_reboot
• windows_zipfile
• Other: windows_printer,
windows_printer_port, windows_task Photo Credit: peyri

26. Helper Functions in Windows Cookbook
• Libraries (include Windows::Helper):
• win_friendly_path - ensures backslashes are used
everywhere
• win_version:
• server_core? server_full? server_datacenter?
• windows_7? windows_server_2008_r2? etc.
Photo Credit: ilovecocacola

27. Windows Report Handlers
• Windows cookbook:
• WindowsRebootHandler
• windows_reboot resource
• windows::reboot_handler recipe
• Eventlog cookbook:
• Send Chef output to Windows Event Log
Photo Credit: blakespot

28. Wrap Up / Q&A

29. Wrap-Up and Q&A
• Much more than what‟s shown here!
• Blog posts and other webinars to come
• Questions?
Thank you!
E: jdunn@opscode.com
W: www.opscode.com/blog
T: @julian_dunn
G: github.com/juliandunn