Chef Manage

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The Chef management console enables the management of nodes, data bags, roles, environments, and cookbooks by using a web user interface. In addition, access to nodes, data bags, roles, environments, and cookbooks is configurable using role-based access control (RBAC).

Note

This feature is included as part of the Chef Automate license agreement and is available via subscription.

Nodes

A node is any machine—physical, virtual, cloud, network device, etc.—that is under management by Chef.

The Chef management console provides ways for users to delete nodes and reset their private keys, edit node attributes, manage the run-lists, configure user and group permissions, and manage tags.

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Reports

Use Reporting to keep track of what happens during the execution of chef-client runs across all of the machines that are under management by Chef. Reports can be generated for the entire organization and they can be generated for specific nodes.

Note

The Reports tab requires the Chef Reporting add-on.

Reporting data is collected during the chef-client run, and the results are posted to the Chef server at the end of the chef-client run, at the same time the node object is uploaded to the Chef server.

The Chef management console provides ways for users to configure the timeframe around which a report is built, and then to review the reports that are available for that timeframe.

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Policy

Policy maps business and operational requirements, process, and workflow to settings and objects stored on the Chef server:

  • Roles define server types, such as “web server” or “database server”
  • Environments define process, such as “dev”, “staging”, or “production”
  • Certain types of data—passwords, user account data, and other sensitive items—can be placed in data bags, which are located in a secure sub-area on the Chef server that can only be accessed by nodes that authenticate to the Chef server with the correct SSL certificates
  • The cookbooks (and cookbook versions) in which organization-specific configuration policies are maintained

The Chef management console provides ways for users to manage data bags, environments, roles, cookbooks, clients, and managing tags.

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Admin

Organizations, users, and groups can be managed from the Chef management console, including role-based access control for any user and group to any of the objects saved to the Chef server.

The Chef server uses role-based access control (RBAC) to restrict access to objects—nodes, environments, roles, data bags, cookbooks, and so on. This ensures that only authorized user and/or chef-client requests to the Chef server are allowed. Access to objects on the Chef server is fine-grained, allowing access to be defined by object type, object, group, user, and organization. The Chef server uses permissions to define how a user may interact with an object, after they have been authorized to do so.

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