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Chef Infrastructure Automation Cookbook
Chef Infrastructure Automation Cookbook
276 pages, Paperback
First published May 29, 2015
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52 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 30, 2014
The steep learning curve and lack of good documentation has always been a problem with complex open source software like Chef so it is good to see an author providing material.
With technical books it important to understand the scope of the book. Is it a Reference book, an introduction or what.
The title says it is a Cookbook and that is what it is. It is a tutorial for getting up and running in chef. It is very comprehensive in provide the commands and the tutorials to learn to do stuff in chef. It is a "doing" book that you need to follow along.
It is not an introduction. I would recommend first doing the:
free learnchef at https://learnchef.opscode.com/
and looking at the sample code in Chef Resources at http://docs.opscode.com/chef/resource...
before attempting the tutorials.
Personally I think it could be improved by adding more diagrams and explanations and a bit more structure to the information. It just flows over the pages so it would be better if each piece of tutorial started at the top of the page so you can reference it more easily later. He only give a couple of lines of explanation before launching in to the commands to do the particular task so a bit more explanation of the why as well as how what be good.
In summary, good information to a currently poorly served area but not a book for absolute beginners.
With technical books it important to understand the scope of the book. Is it a Reference book, an introduction or what.
The title says it is a Cookbook and that is what it is. It is a tutorial for getting up and running in chef. It is very comprehensive in provide the commands and the tutorials to learn to do stuff in chef. It is a "doing" book that you need to follow along.
It is not an introduction. I would recommend first doing the:
free learnchef at https://learnchef.opscode.com/
and looking at the sample code in Chef Resources at http://docs.opscode.com/chef/resource...
before attempting the tutorials.
Personally I think it could be improved by adding more diagrams and explanations and a bit more structure to the information. It just flows over the pages so it would be better if each piece of tutorial started at the top of the page so you can reference it more easily later. He only give a couple of lines of explanation before launching in to the commands to do the particular task so a bit more explanation of the why as well as how what be good.
In summary, good information to a currently poorly served area but not a book for absolute beginners.
May 14, 2014
Quite a nice as a reference material.
Cookbooks are related to quite common software so it's not hard to find them applicable.
What I was missing was something like a walkthrough to create such a cookbook (Chapter 4 is not enough): for instance some of the particular recipes could have been presented in a more thorough way to show the way to create such a cookbook.
I really like Chapter I (Chef Infrastructure) - it's a nice overview, but in my opinion in needs more love (to get more elaborate). What I didn't like? Section about testing the cookbooks is far too brief (as the topic is quite complex).
The best proof of this book's value is that I was getting back to it quite often.
Cookbooks are related to quite common software so it's not hard to find them applicable.
What I was missing was something like a walkthrough to create such a cookbook (Chapter 4 is not enough): for instance some of the particular recipes could have been presented in a more thorough way to show the way to create such a cookbook.
I really like Chapter I (Chef Infrastructure) - it's a nice overview, but in my opinion in needs more love (to get more elaborate). What I didn't like? Section about testing the cookbooks is far too brief (as the topic is quite complex).
The best proof of this book's value is that I was getting back to it quite often.
November 6, 2013
After picking up basics of Chef framework, Chef Infrastructure Automation Cookbook is a must read. Among Chef framework itself, it also covers techniques such as testing, as well as integration with tools and technologies like Vagrant and AWS, with excellent examples. Management of cookbook dependencies is lot easier with tools like Berkshelf, and author follows that practice from the beginning to the end.
January 2, 2015
Excellent reference.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews