This guide will get you up and running with chef server and client on the same Windows 2008 Server.

The instructions outlined herin are a distillaiton of the Chef Fast-Start Guide For Windows

Create a Hosted Chef Account

The instructions for Creating a Hosted Chef Account are easy to follow. Do that and return to this guide.

Install Chef Client and Server

Run the Chef Full Installer and then verify your install with these commands.

chef-client --version
tar --version

should produce

Chef: 0.10.4
bsdtar 2.8.3 0 libarchive 2.8.3

Install Git

Follow the instructions listed in the github.com Windows Setup Guide.

Then verify

git --version

will produce

git version 1.7.6.mmsygit.0

or whatever the latest git version happens to be.

Prepare Your File System

Follow these instructions to set up your base Chef directory. You’ll use this when creating cookbooks.

cd %HOMEPATH%
git clone git://github.com/opscode/chef-repo.git
mkdir %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo\.chef

Move in your Chef keys you created in the first step of this guide titled Create A Hosted Account. Edit the snippet below for your system settings:

move %HOMEPATH%\Downloads\knife.rb %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo\.chef
move %HOMEPATH%\Downloads\tsabat.pem %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo\.chef
move %HOMEPATH%\Downloads\fizbuzz-validator.pem %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo\.chef

Open WordPad to edit your knife.rb file.

Write %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo\.chef\knife.rb, 

MEPATH%\chef-repo In that file, change cookbook_path ["#{current_dir}/../cookbooks"] to cookbook_path ["#{ENV['HOME']}/chef-repo/cookbooks"]

Verify Connection To Hosted Chef

Run the commands

cd %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo
knife client list fizbuzz-validator

TODO: Explain the validator’s role in Chef

and you’ll see your machine name listed there.

Configure The Workstation as Client

Run these commands

cd %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo
knife configure client %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo

Then edit your client.rb

Write %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo

making it look like this, substituting fizbuzz for your own organization.

log_level        :info
log_location     STDOUT
chef_server_url  'https://api.opscode.com/organizations/fizbuzz'
validation_client_name 'fizbuzz-validator'
validation_key cd "#{ENV['HOME']}/chef-repo/.chef/fizbuzz-validator.pem"
client_key "#{ENV['home']}/chef-repo/client.pem 

Run chef-client to register your client with the server.

chef-client -c %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo\client.rb

You’ll see output which looks like this:

[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:03 -0800] INFO: *** Chef 0.10.4 ***
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:09 -0800] INFO: Client key C:\Users\Administrator/chef-r
epo/client.pem is not present - registering
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:14 -0800] INFO: Run List is []
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:14 -0800] INFO: Run List expands to []
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:14 -0800] INFO: Starting Chef Run for WIN-JLR7H2GM3Q5
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:14 -0800] INFO: Loading cookbooks []
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:14 -0800] WARN: Node WIN-JLR7H2GM3Q5 has an empty run li
st.
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:15 -0800] INFO: Chef Run complete in 1.484375 seconds
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:15 -0800] INFO: Running report handlers
[Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:48:15 -0800] INFO: Report handlers complete

Verify that your node was added

cd %HOMEPATH%\chef-repo
knife client list