Common cookbooks reference

Azure CycleCloud clusters are built and configured using a combination of a base machine image, CycleCloud Cluster Init, and the Chef infrastructure automation framework.

Only advanced CycleCloud users need to understand how to build Chef cookbooks. However, many users benefit from a basic knowledge of how CycleCloud uses Chef. In particular, users should understand the concept of a run_list, recipe, and Chef attributes.

Basic Chef concepts

Each node in a CycleCloud cluster is initialized by following a Chef run_list. The run_list is an ordered set of features or recipes to apply to initialize the node. The recipes contain the implementation of low-level system operations required to apply the feature. Cookbooks are collections of recipes that make up a feature. Cookbooks and recipes are parameterized by Chef attributes to allow further customization and configuration of the feature.

CycleCloud ships with a set of predefined cluster templates that you can use to provision a set of cluster types that is sufficient for many users. You can easily accomplish further customization using Cluster-Init. So most users never need to modify run_lists or build their own recipes and cookbooks.

However, CycleCloud clusters are provisioned using a set of Common Cookbooks available to all CycleCloud clusters. These cookbooks have a set of attributes that you might want to customize. The following sections document some of the most commonly used attributes.

Note

Prefer Cluster Template features to direct modification of Chef attributes.

Common Cookbook attributes are subject to change. Attribute settings are commonly superseded as the features they control become available as more general or powerful features of CycleCloud. If a customization is available in both the Cluster Template and via a Chef attribute, always prefer the Cluster Template method since it's the more general solution.

For more information on the Opscode Chef framework, see the Opscode website.

Using Chef attributes

Chef attributes configure the operation of the run_list for an individual node or node array. Set these attributes in the node's [[[configuration]]] subsection. For example, the following code sets the CycleServer admin password for a node configured to run CycleServer:

[[node cycle_server]]

[[[configuration]]]

run_list = role[monitor], recipe[cyclecloud::searchable], recipe[cfirst], \
recipe[cuser::admins], recipe[cshared::client], recipe[cycle_server::4-2-x], \
recipe[cluster_init], recipe[ccallback::start], recipe[ccallback::stop]

cycle_server.admin.pass=P\@ssw0rd

Thunderball

Cycle Computing provides a Chef resource called thunderball to simplify downloading of objects from cloud services to nodes. Thunderball automatically handles retrying failed downloads and supports multiple configurations. By default, thunderball downloads a file from the CycleCloud package repository and writes it to $JETPACK_HOME/system/chef/cache/thunderballs. An example using the default configuration:

thunderball "condor" do
    url "cycle/condor-8.2.9.tgz"
end

The following table lists all of the attributes of the thunderball resource.

Attribute	Description
checksum	SHA256 checksum for the artifact to be downloaded.
client	Command line client to use. Defaults to :pogo.
config	Custom thunderball configuration to use.
dest_file	The file path to download to. storedir is ignored when dest_file is in use.
storedir	Location files are downloaded to. Defaults to thunderball.storedir.
url	The location of the file to be downloaded (full or partial).

To download objects from another repository, use custom configuration sections.

Attribute	Description
base	Base URL.
client	Command line tool to interact with provider.
endpoint	URL endpoint to use.
filename	Config file to use.
password	Password for Azure.
proxy_host	Host to use as proxy.
proxy_port	Port to use for proxy.
user	Local system user for the configuration. If you specify the user attribute, the filename attribute is ignored. the user's home directory contains the configuration file.
username	Access_key/username for Azure.