We’ll take a look at an overview of how systems are maintained with chef. The demonstration will include examples of common tasks like configuring an apache webserver, modifying load balancer pools, and how tools like chef can make server configuration more dynamic. We’ll also take a look at how you can keep track of what changes are being made over time, and confirm configurations are consistent across servers. Most importantly, this will be an interactive session! Questions are welcome, and there will be time set aside for Q&A to dive deeper into any of the covered topics, or just answer questions about Chef!

Nick Rycar has been a sysadmin of one sort or another since moving to Washington in 2005. He first discovered Chef in 2011, when he was working at a local hosting provider, and needed a way to standardize server configurations across our customer base, and has been hooked ever since.  Nick joined Chef in 2014, and is currently the Inside Solutions Architect team lead — a fancy way of saying he work with their customer base and community to administer product demos, training courses, technical Q&A, and weekly open office hours.