Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Summary
In this chapter, we presented an overview of attributes and how Chef uses attributes to cap-
ture the state of a node. Attributes can be defined in multiple places:
▪ Automatically via
ohai
▪ Attribute files
▪ Recipes
▪ Other cookbooks
Because attributes can be defined in multiple places, Chef defines a
priority
scheme for how
attribute values are composed from multiple sources. You can tweak this priority scheme by
manually providing different levels of
precedence
, including
automatic
,
default
, and
over-
ride
. In general, you should use the
default
precedence, unless there is a specific need to ex-
tend or customize Chef, letting Chef choose the default priority in which attribute values are
merged together.
In the next chapter, we'll be introducing Chef Server. Chef Server is a useful central reposit-
ory for all shared information necessary to manage multiple nodes effectively.