Scalr, now with Chef!

Scalr now integrates with Chef, the configuration management tool offered by Opscode.

Chef allows you to manage software on given servers. Need to update Apache to a newer version? You bet. Need to apply some security patches? No problemo. It requires the ability to write Ruby code (but who doesn’t know that these days?).

Scalr and Chef together—that’s like peanut butter and jelly.

But Chef by itself doesn’t do the provisioning—you know, actually making the API calls to your cloud infrastructure provider to instantiate servers, create block storage volumes, or even assign IP addresses. It can’t provide the exception handling either (e.g. on server failure, do X then Y). It won’t automatically spin up a new slave when an existing one dies.

You see where we’re going with this, don’t you?

Combine the forces of Chef and Scalr, and you can now use Scalr to create a farm, add a few “base” roles, assign runlists to them, then get Scalr to make the necessary calls to launch hundreds of servers at a time. When the instances boot, Scalr makes sure the assigned runlists are executed. In turn, Chef follows the recipes in your runlist, adding software ingredients and putting the servers in the state you want.

Scalr then becomes a mission control center where you can see your infrastructure, track spending, perform updates, and more.

Sounds good, right? To get started, you’ll need to (1) have a Chef server running or be using hosted Chef and (2) be on the IPO plan or higher. When logged in to Scalr, go to “Chef servers” under Roles, and add the credentials to your Chef server.

Provided they have Chef on them, your roles will have a Chef side-tab. From there you can configure your runlists, which will run every time a new instance of that role is provisioned.

       

We already have a few clients using this, and they are delighted. If you are a Chef user, try it out and let us know what you think. And if you have suggestions for improvement, we’re all ears—as usual.

Cheers,
The Scalr “Bork Bork Bork” Team