Top 10 Chef Interview Questions and Answers in 2024

Chef Interview Questions DevOps

Even you are a subject matter expert you must need to brush up your skills with interview questions for chef. You know that the infrastructure configuration, automation, and management are the challenging tasks before as these were done manually as it used to take a lot of time being tedious and cumbersome to do. When it was done traditionally by the IT administrator the task was to configure and manage few infrastructures. As the infrastructure grew by say in hundreds the task was next to impossible. To do these quite a few tools came up in the market and chef is one of the most popular tools by which the infrastructure configuration, automation, and management can be done very easily. DevOps training is conducted by StarAgile which covers the DevOps tools such as Chef.

DevOps Chef Interview Questions and Answers for Experienced

1. Explain in detail about SSL

Secure Socket Layer is an encryption-based internet security protocol. It was first developed by Netscape for internet communications to ensure data integrity, authentication, and privacy. Transport Layer Security is the new security protocol that has been developed from SSL.

There are 3 types of SSL certificates those are Domain Validation SSL certificates, Organization Validation SSL certificates, and Extended Validation SSL certificates.

2. Update cookbook with an example

There are 2 ways to upload the cookbooks by using the knife cookbook sub-command and using the knife upload sub-command. They are as follows,

To upload a single cookbook the syntax is 

# knife cookbooks upload [cookbook-name]

To upload the prod-db cookbook

# cd ~/chef-repo

# knife cookbook upload prod-db

Uploading prod-db [1, 0, 0]

Uploaded 1 cookbook

Learn more about DevOps coding and scripting from the DevOps course by StarAgile.

3. In detail talk about bootstrapping

A bootstrap in chef is a process that installs the chef-client on the node so that it can run as a chef-client and communicate with the chef server.

4. Run through the run list in detail

A run-list consists of all the information to make the node configure into the desired state.

It is an ordered list of recipes or the roles

It is specific to the node on which it runs

It is stored as part of the node object on the chef-server

It is created and tested using the knife in the workstation and then uploaded into the chef server to run on the chef-client

5. How to identify whether chef-client is running or not

You can use a Report handler or an Exception to find out if the codes on a failed or successful chef-client run

For example, if you use Nagios report handler it will sound an alarm if the successful run has not run in the last 60 minutes.

6. Is a chef very important in DevOps? Why

The chef is very important in DevOps as it is used in configuration management which is one of the pillars of DevOps. Configuration management in DevOps is covered in detail at StarAgile DevOps online course. We recommend you explore, enquire, and register for the course.

7. Write the steps to follow for running a chef solo

• Create a solo.rb file inside the chef repo
• Add the file to git repo
• Create a node.json file inside the chef repo
• Get the ntp cookbook inside the chef repo using a knife
• Add te node.json file to git
• Commit and push the files to git repo
• Login to the node where one wants to provision the chef-solo
• Clone the chef repo on the machine
• Cd to the chef repo
• Finally, run the chef-solo to converge the node

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8. How to know if the chef recipe is correct (how to test chef recipe)

• Install the cookbook
• Run-on the working cookbook the knife cookbook test command
• Test it again by breaking something in the cookbook
• Run the knife test command again

9. Do you know where chef logs are stored?

All logs generated by the chef-server can be found in /var/log/opscode.

10. Briefly explain about templates in chef?

Chef provides the templates as a resource to be used in the recipe. To fill the configuration files with the dynamic values chef uses the templates.

Beginners chef interview questions DevOps

1. Do you know what is node

Node is an infrastructure for which the chef-client is installed and is controlled and managed by the chef server. A node can be a desktop, a server, or a router or firewall or any other device where the chef-client can be installed and is configured, automated, controlled, and managed by the chef server. 

2. Elaborate the connection between resource and chef

Chef resource is the node or Operating system and its desired state of the configuration. It is a statement of configuration policy that describes the desired state of a node from which one wants the current state to be taken by using the resource providers.

A resource is used in chef as a statement of configuration policy that does the following things,

• Describes configuration items’ desired state
• Describes what steps are needed to bring the item to the desired state from the current state
• Illustrates the resource type such as service, template, or package
• The resources are grouped into recipes that describe the working configuration

3. What are the basics of a recipe? 

Recipes are written in Ruby and contain information about everything that needs to be created, changed, or run on the node. Recipes are a collection of the resources that describes the node's desired state.

4. Differentiate cookbook and recipe 

The recipe is a collection of the resources that are required to bring the node to the desired state. 

A cookbook is used to group recipes and other information in a manageable way that is not possible with recipe alone.

5. Explain about Chef

Chef is a configuration management automation and infrastructure management tool which is one of the popular tools for the IT admin. The chef consists of workstations, nodes, and a server. The workstation is the virtual server where the configuration is created and tested. Nodes are any infrastructure that has the chef-client on it. The chef server is the engine or the server that controls the nodes, communicate with the nodes and workstations. The diagram shows the typical chef setup.

Understand these basic chef DevOps interview questions will help you kickstart your career in DevOps.

Finally, few Chef Automation interview questions

1. What is a chef automation tool?

The chef is a configuration management tool used to automate the process of provisioning the infrastructure.

2. How to learn about it

There are several ways to learn the chef configuration automation tool. You can do self-study on the internet, carry out small projects, or learn by undergoing DevOps training in which the Chef tool is covered with a reputed institute such as StarAgile. StarAgile has comprehensive training in DevOps which covers the tools and has both lab and theory online sessions. 

3. List the Benefits of chef automation

• Increasing the service resiliency
• Speeding the software delivery
• Automating the infra configuration management
• Delivering the infrastructure anywhere and any application
• Manage on-premises and cloud in one go
• Risk Management adoption and improvement

Know more DevOps Benefits as well and yearn to become a DevOps engineer to have a bright career. 

We have covered most of the Interview questions Chef in this article. If you want to read more on DevOps Interview Questions and other tools visit StarAgile website. We want to know that if you are serious about your career, if yes, then undergo a training with StarAgile which is an interactive DevOps Online Training covering both lab and theory of DevOps and its tools.