1. Instant Chef Starter; So, what is Chef?; Multi-server management; Use case - managing infrastructure for a multi-tiered application; Concepts and terminology; Components; Basic terminology; Back to the problem at hand; Defining roles; Defining nodes; Defining environments; Putting it together; Installation; Getting Chef installed; Installation methods

Installation on a Debian-based distributionAdding the Opscode repository to your APT sources; Adding the GnuPG key to your keyring; Updating your APT repositories; Installing the Chef Server; Manual installation; Installing Ruby and Rubygems; Installing Chef via gems; Installing CouchDB and RabbitMQ; Installing Chef Server components; Setting up the configuration file; Starting the Chef services; Verifying installation; Configuring knife; Verifying your knife configuration; Quick start; Getting started with using Chef; Bootstrapping servers; How the process works

Examining the bootstrap script; Performing the bootstrap; Verifying the registration; Using knife; Via the web console; Downloading and installing cookbooks; Getting cookbooks from Opscode with knife; Installing cookbooks; Uploading the cookbook; Verifying that it was uploaded; Downloading the dependencies; Creating roles; Setting up roles; Creating a new role; Applying roles to nodes; Viewing the run list; Applying configurations; Verifying it worked; Top features you need to know about; Getting more in-depth with Chef; Developing your own recipes and cookbooks

Getting to know your knife (every chef's primary tool) Commands; Bootstrapping a server; Viewing and manipulating data; Managing nodes and roles; Editing existing data; Creating new entities; Deploying to multiple servers with a single bound!; Chef search queries; Multiple SSH sessions; Advanced data configuration using data bags; What are data bags; Structure; Using in recipes; Accessing data; An example recipe; Searching data bags; Wrapping up; Cookbook contents; Cookbook file organization; Recipes; Metadata; Attributes; Order of loading; Using attributes; Templates; Template file format

A quick ERB primer; The template resource; Template variables; Where to store templates; Resources; Using resources; Writing a basic recipe; People and places that you should know; Opscode resources; Chef wiki and documentation; Chef source code; Community portal; Opscode blog; Chef users' mailing list; Cookbook repositories; Opscode community cookbooks; Opscode cookbooks on GitHub; Vagrant; Vagrant project; Vagrant butcher; Ruby resources; Ruby quick-start tutorial; Official Ruby documentation; Code academy Ruby track