Automation and scripting have long been essential to the ArcGIS Enterprise platform, and the software setup process is no different. We provide custom resources for the Chef IT automation framework to save you time and effort, regardless of the size or complexity of your intended ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. And this year, we’ve been working to expand our tutorials and videos to get you started with Chef Server.
The Chef Server process is desirable for a lot of reasons:
- It’s centralized. From a workstation, you customize your setup scripts and parameters, then send all your resources to the Chef Server. Each machine in the deployment, via the Chef Client software, gets the necessary resources from the Chef Server and executes your instructions. You can monitor progress at every stage from the server’s Chef Manage site.
- It’s efficient. Rather than moving from machine to machine, installing component by component, you can use our custom resources to run all the tasks involved in installation and configuration. You can even write and run a script (such as in PowerShell) to execute each task in order while you sit back and learn John Nelson’s latest cartography trick (or get some other work done – no judgment here).
- It’s scalable and replicable. The real power of Chef Server comes when you have a bunch of machines to deploy your system across. Given its centralized structure, it takes hardly more effort to set up an eight-machine Enterprise deployment than it does a two-machine deployment. When it comes time to add, change, or remove machines, all you need to do is adjust your script parameters and run Chef again.
To get you started, we’ve launched a video series to cover everything Chef and ArcGIS Enterprise. The first two videos in the series are available now!
Introduction
The introduction video gets you acquainted with Chef and ArcGIS Enterprise, and explains three essential components of the workflow: cookbooks, recipes, and roles.
Multi-machine GeoAnalytics Server
The second video in the series walks you through a full workflow — in this case, a four-machine deployment ready to handle and analyze big data with GeoAnalytics Server.
Get started
So let’s automate! Take a look at our Chef homepage on GitHub to view workflows and dive in. We encourage you to interact with us by submitting issues and feedback in the GitHub repository.
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