national_parks_cookbook

Purpose

This cookbook is intended to be a demonstration of using Chef cookbooks to install a full-blown Java application (see below). A Test Kitchen file is included in the cookbook that can be used to spin up VirtualBox VM on the local desktop using Vagrant. Test Kitchen will then configure the VM to download and install the sample application, JDK 8, Tomcat 8.5, MongoDB in the VM and run it.

The Application

The National Parks [1] application is a JavaEE web application that runs on Tomcat 8.5 and uses MongoDB as its backend data store. Its purpose is to render a map of the United States and place markers on all the National Park locations in the US.

[1] https://github.com/billmeyer/national-parks

Software Required

• Chef DK - https://downloads.chef.io/chefdk
• Vagrant - https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
• Virtual Box - https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
• Git - Windows, Linux, Mac

Getting Started

1. Be sure to install the required software specified above.

2. Clone the Git repository to your local desktop:

    cd $HOME
    git clone https://github.com/billmeyer/national-parks.git
   

3. Change directory to the root of the cookbook:

    cd national_parks_cookbook
   

4. The supplied Test Kitchen configuration (in .kitchen.yml) contains support for creating either an Centos 7 or Ubuntu 16 VM. You can verify this by executing the following:

   kitchen list
   Instance             Driver   Provisioner  Verifier  Transport  Last Action    Last Error
   default-ubuntu-1604  Vagrant  ChefZero     Inspec    Ssh        <Not Created>  <None>
   default-centos-73    Vagrant  ChefZero     Inspec    Ssh        <Not Created>  <None>        
   

5. Use Test Kitchen to create the new VM on either Centos or Ubuntu:

    kitchen create centos
   

   --or--

    kitchen create ubuntu
   

6. Once the new VM is created, the cookbook can be deployed into the new by executing:

   kitchen converge centos
   

   --or--

   kitchen converge ubuntu
   

7. After a few minutes, the cookbook will be applied and can be unit tested with Test Kitchen by executing:

    kitchen verify
   

   This will apply all of the InSpec unit tests located in national_parks_cookbook/test/smoke/default to the running VM and confirm the application checks out correctly.

8. Connect to the App! Using your favorite web browser, browse to https://192.168.33.33/ and you should see the National Parks application running on your desktop!