Chef = Node Attribute, how to Manage them locally, versioned and then upload them?

Solution 1:

In Chef, the node is the authority. The best practice is to use knife bootstrap to get a system set up to run chef and integrate it with the Chef server.

The majority of the node attribute data is generated dynamically by the node when chef-client runs, where it uses ohai to discover information about itself. Other data can come from cookbooks and roles. Your cookbooks and roles should certainly be stored in your version control repository, in what is typically called the Chef Repository.

The main reason to store nodes locally is to capture their run lists. We recommend that you have a runbook document in your repository (like a README :)) that describes what kinds of servers you have and what their roles are.

Solution 2:

I am currently thinking on how to keep track of changes to node run_list in repository. And the only thing that comes to my mind is to create a role for every node with the same name as the node. For example:

1. We have 3 servers with hostnames: alpha, bob, charlie.
2. We create 3 role-files in our roles folder: alpha.rb, bob.rb, charlie.rb
3. We provide name, description, run_list in every file as if they are ordinary roles.
4. Create run_lists for nodes that contain only the role with respective name.

And whenever we need to change the run_list we change the role and run_list stays the same.