Chef Knife Plugin for Windows Azure (IAAS)
Jul 11 - 6 min read
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Chef is an open-source systems management and cloud infrastructure automation framework created by Opscode. It helps in managing your IT infrastructure and applications as code. It gives you a way to automate your infrastructure and processes.
Knife is a CLI to create, update, search and delete the entities or manage actions on entities in your infrastructure like node (hosts), cloud resources, metadata (roles, environments) and code for infrastructure (recipes, cookbooks), etc. A Knife plug-in is a set of one (or more) subcommands that can be added to Knife to support additional functionality that is not built-in to the base set of Knife subcommands.
The knife azure is a knife plugin which helps you automate virtual machine provisioning in Windows Azure and bootstrapping it. This article talks about using Chef and knife-azure plugin to provision Windows/Linux virtual machines in Windows Azure and bootstrapping the virtual machine.
Understanding Windows Azure (IaaS):
To deploy a Virtual Machine in a region (or service location) in Azure, all the components shown described above have to be created;
- A Virtual Machine is associated with a DNS (or cloud service).
- Multiple Virtual Machines can be associated with a single DNS with load-balancing enabled on certain ports (eg. 80, 443 etc).
- A Virtual Machine has a storage account associated with it which storages OS and Data disks
- A X509 certificate is required for password-less SSH authentication on Linux VMs and HTTPS-based WinRM authentication for Windows VMs.
- A service location is a geographic region in which to create the VMs, Storage accounts etc
The Storage Account
The storage account holds all the disks (OS as well as data). It is recommended that you create a storage account in a region and use it for the VMs in that region.
If you provide the option –azure-storage-account, knife-azure plugin creates a new storage account with that name if it doesnt already exist. It uses this storage account to create your VM.
If you do not specify the option, then the plugin checks for an existing storage account in the service location you have mentioned (using option –service-location). If no storage account exists in your location, then it creates a new storage with name prefixed with the azure-dns-name and suffixed with a 10 char random string.
If you provide the option –azure-storage-account, knife-azure plugin creates a new storage account with that name if it doesnt already exist. It uses this storage account to create your VM.
If you do not specify the option, then the plugin checks for an existing storage account in the service location you have mentioned (using option –service-location). If no storage account exists in your location, then it creates a new storage with name prefixed with the azure-dns-name and suffixed with a 10 char random string.
Azure Virtual Machine
This is also called as Role(specified using option –azure-vm-name). If you do not specify the VM name, the default VM name is taken from the DNS name( specified using option –azure-dns-name). The VM name should be unique within a deployment.
An Azure VM is analogous to the Amazon EC2 instance. Like an instance in Amazon is created from an AMI, you can create an Azure VM from the stock images provided by Azure. You can also create your own images and save them against your subscription.
An Azure VM is analogous to the Amazon EC2 instance. Like an instance in Amazon is created from an AMI, you can create an Azure VM from the stock images provided by Azure. You can also create your own images and save them against your subscription.
Azure DNS
This is also called as Hosted Service or Cloud Service. It is a container for your application deployments in Azure( specified using option –azure-dns-name). A cloud service is created for each azure deployment. You can have multiple VMs(Roles) within a deployment with certain ports configured as load-balanced.
OS Disk
A disk is a VHD that you can boot and mount as a running version of an operating system. After an image is provisioned, it becomes a disk. A disk is always created when you use an image to create a virtual machine. Any VHD that is attached to virtualized hardware and that is running as part of a service is a disk. An existing OS Disk can be used (specified using option –azure-os-disk-name ) to create a VM as well.
Certificates
For SSH login without password, an X509 Certificate needs to be uploaded to the Azure DNS/Hosted service. As an end user, simply specify your private RSA key using –identity-file option and the knife plugin takes care of generating a X509 certificate. The virtual machine which is spawned then contains the required SSH thumbprint.
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Gem Install
Run the command
gem install knife-azure
Install from Source Code
To get the latest changes in the knife azure plugin, download the source code, build and install the plugin:
1. Uninstall any existing versions
1. Uninstall any existing versions
$ gem uninstall knife-azure Successfully uninstalled knife-azure-1.2.0
2. Clone the git repo and build the code
$ git clone https://github.com/opscode/knife-azure $ cd knife-azure $ gem build knife-azure.gemspec WARNING: description and summary are identical Successfully built RubyGem Name: knife-azure Version: 1.2.0 File: knife-azure-1.2.0.gem
3. Install the gem
$ gem install knife-azure-1.2.0.gem Successfully installed knife-azure-1.2.0 1 gem installed Installing ri documentation for knife-azure-1.2.0... Building YARD (yri) index for knife-azure-1.2.0... Installing RDoc documentation for knife-azure-1.2.0...
4. Verify your installation
$ gem list | grep azure knife-azure (1.2.0)
To provision a VM in Windows Azure and bootstrap using knife, Firstly, create a new windows azure account: at this link and secondly, download the publish settings file fromhttps://manage.windowsazure.com/publishsettings The publish settings file contains certificates used to sign all the HTTP requests (REST APIs).
Azure supports two modes to create virtual machines – quick create and advanced.
Azure supports two modes to create virtual machines – quick create and advanced.
Azure VM Quick Create
You can create a server with minimal configuration. On the Azure Management Portal, this corresponds to the “Quick Create – Virtual Machine” workflow. The corresponding sample command for quick create for a small Windows instance is:
knife azure server create --azure-publish-settings-file '/path/to/your/cert.publishsettingsfile' --azure-dns-name 'myservice' --azure-source-image 'windows-image-name' --winrm-password 'jetstream@123' --template-file 'windows-chef-client-msi.erb' --azure-service-location "West US"
Azure VM Advanced Create
You can set various other options in the advanced create including service location or region, storage-account, VM name etc. The corresponding command to create a Linux instance with advanced options is:
knife azure server create --azure-publish-settings-file "path/to/your/publish/settings/file" --azure-vm-size Medium --azure-dns-name "HelloAzureDNS" --azure-service-location "West US" --azure-vm-name 'myvm01' --azure-source-image "b39f27a8b8c64d52b05eac6a62ebad85__Ubuntu-13_04-amd64-server-20130423-en-us-30GB" --azure-storage-account "helloazurestorage1" --ssh-user "helloazure" --identity-file "path/to/your/rsa/pvt/key"
To create a VM and connect it to an existing DNS/service, you can use a command as below:
knife azure server create --azure-publish-settings-file "path/to/your/publish/settings/file" --azure-connect-to-existing-dns --azure-dns-name 'myservice' --azure-vm-name 'myvm02' --azure-service-location 'West US' --azure-source-image 'source-image-name' --ssh-user 'jetstream' --ssh-password 'jetstream@123'
List available Images:
knife azure image list
List currently available Virtual Machines:
knife azure server list
Delete and Clean up a Virtual Machine:
knife azure server delete --azure-dns-name myvm02 'myservice' --chef-node-name 'myvm02' --purge
This post is meant to explain the basics and usage for knife-azure.