Managing Windows Servers with Chef

Harness the power of Chef to automate management of Windows-based systems using hands-on examples with this book and ebook.

Overview

• Discover how Chef can be used to manage a heterogeneous network of Windows and Linux systems with ease
• Configure an entire .NET application stack, deploy it, and scale in the cloud
• Employ a step-by-step and practical approach to automate provisioning and configuration of Windows hosts with Chef

In Detail

This book begins with an introduction to the functionality and benefits of using Chef to manage Windows systems. From there, you are shown an overview of the Chef architecture and how to prepare a Windows host so that it can be managed by Chef, followed by an example of writing code to install a popular .NET application with Chef.

This book looks at how Windows system administrators can effectively leverage Chef as an automated system management tool to simplify their lives through managed infrastructure. Included are practical examples that will help you to understand how to take advantage of Chef when managing your infrastructure.

By the end of the book, you will be able to deploy software, provision hosts (including cloud servers), develop and test recipes for multiple platforms, and manage Windows hosts using the powerful tools that Chef provides.

What you will learn from this book

• Integrate Windows systems with Linux-based systems in a heterogeneous network
• Automate the configuration of new Windows servers to provide various network services such as a web application
• Scale your Windows infrastructure in a consistent and automated manner with cloud providers such as AWS, Rackspace Cloud, and Azure
• Deploy new hosts into your infrastructure in minutes instead of hours
• Develop cookbooks and recipes for your custom Windows configuration
• Deploy and configure a complete .NET / IIS application to a Windows server using Chef

Approach

This is a guide to automating Windows infrastructures using Chef, from the big picture through to hands-on examples.

Who this book is written for

This book is designed for systems administrators who have had some exposure to Chef and are interested using it to manage their Windows-based systems. Some exposure to programming or scripting languages is expected for portions of this book.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Chef and Windows
Chapter 2: Installing the Client – an Overview of Chef Concepts
Chapter 3: Windows-specific Resources
Chapter 4: Provisioning an Application Stack
Chapter 5: Managing Cloud Services with Chef
Chapter 6: Going Beyond the Basics