I'm an automation junkie who has lived in the windows world for the majority of my career. For the past year, I've been writing Chef based build and orchestration code and hacking on some open source automation projects. Things are different. Alot of it good and some is just hard. This session will focus on how to best approach a new world of technology and provide opportunities to share like experiences transitioning to different tool sets. https://youtu.be/i_iCgFlxWmw

1. Entering the Chef
Ecosystem from the
Windows world
MATT WROCK
APRIL 1, 2015

2. About Me (matt wrock)
Predominately Microsoft dev background
Java developer on windows and solaris/linux before the .net era
10 years in online ad serving platforms
Worked for Microsoft 4 ½ years
Focus on deployment automation and environment setup over past 4 years
Commiter on Chocolatey and Pester
Author of Boxstarter
Software Engineer in Automation and Tools at CenturyLink Cloud
Contributed to Vagrant, Test-Kitchen, and more
Blog: HurryUpAndWait.io
Twitter: @mwrockx

3. Civilization at last!

4. So you want to learn Chef?

6. I have to learn Ruby?
But I’ve never run linux. Am I just starting over?
ArtiWHATory???
Why doesn’t anything work?
I’m gonna send a Pull Request to your HEAD!!

7. Shiny packaged monoliths
“Devops in a box”
Dragity Dropity
Limited flexibility
Difficult to source control

8. Open Source – a DIY approach
Specialized
Small
Composable
Programmable!!

9. Do I have to learn Ruby?
•For basic chef usage, you just need to know the recipe DSL
•Not everyone needs to know ruby well
•Want to create provisioning drivers, kitchen or vagrant
plugins, custom knife plugins or wrap central domain
model in a gem? …YES. You need to learn ruby.
•Somebody (maybe you) needs to know ruby more

10. Careful not to shoehorn Ruby constructs
into familiar .net fundamentals
Example:
Ruby gems is like nuget. Ruby gems
is NOT the same as nuget

11. Its fun to judge…
But not very productive

12. Learning tips
Full immersion
Read source code
Contribute to open source even just a
few lines at a time
Sit with a rubyist

13. Making things work

14. Don’t bother with ruby versions and gem conflicts…
Be kind to yourself
Use the chefdk

15. Avoid windows updates
in chef runs even during
initial provisioning
Bake them into base
images

16. Embrace DSC

17. Package management is a thing
Chocolatey…
Learn it. Love it. Live it.

18. Is your remoting configured correctly?

19. Understand the limits of remoting
When to use
Scheduled Tasks
•Windows Updates
•2nd Hop auth

20. Test…Test…Test
Check out the latest Test-Kitchen on windows work
There is a Pester busser

21. Q & A and Thank You!!
•Blog: http://www.hurryupandwait.io/
•Github: https://github.com/mwrock
•Twitter: https://twitter.com/mwrockx