UNIT - V

Testing Tools and automation:

- Various types of testing,
- Automation of testing Pros and cons,
Selenium
- Introduction,
- Selenium features,
- JavaScript testing,
- Testing backend integration points,
- Test-driven development,
- REPL-driven development
Deployment of the system:
- Deployment systems,
- Virtualization stacks,
- code execution at the client,
- Puppet master and agents,
- Ansible,
Deployment tools:
-Chef, Salt Stack and Docker.

Testing Tools and automation:

Software testing is a software engineering activity to check whether the actual

results of the software being developed matches with those of the expected
results and to ensure that the software system is defect free. It involves the
execution of a software component or system component to evaluate one or
more properties of interest. Software testing is not a new eld and it has
appeared many years earlier, in software, we need to create a good and
ef cient software product or services, but this can be dif cult because
software must be tested before by stakeholders. A simple de nition of software
testing is the process of investigating software to check if it satis es the
requirement and detects errors that can happen in any software. “Another
de nition of software testing is the process of testing, verifying and validating
the user’s requirements”

Testing in a DevOps environment looks like:

• Testing is a continuous and automated process that enables continuous and
faster delivery of software.
• Testing spans every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
• Each step of the SDLC involves different forms of testing. This minimizes
backtracking in the case that you’ve detected an error.
• Testing is no longer the responsibility of one particular team. Shared testing
responsibilities allow everyone to understand the impacts behind each
change.

- Various types of testing

The complexity of software testing in the DevOps world of fast-paced

deployment demands flexible thinking about deployment of test resources. Risk
reduction is paramount and crowd testing can be a critical component in that
effort. Testing may include:
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 - Integration testing
- Functional testing
- API testing
- Exploratory testing
- Regression testing
- Compatibility testing across platforms
- Security testing
- Acceptance testing
- Deployment testing

- Automation of testing Pros and cons

Automated testing is a powerful tool that can help you and your team with
various tasks, including writing better code to simplify the process of
regression. Unfortunately, automated testing can be misunderstood by some
developers who don’t see any value in it.

Automated testing is a method in which software tests and other sets of

repeatable tasks can be performed without human interaction. Furthermore,
these tests can run frequently to ensure that your application performs as
expected continuously. This happens typically whenever the source code is
updated.

Many people tend to confuse automated testing with automatic (or robotic)
testing, a form of automated testing that uses automation tools to execute tests
without human intervention. In this article, however, we will be focusing on the
more common de nition of automated testing.

The pros of automated testing

1. Increased accuracy
One of the main bene ts of automated testing is that it can increase accuracy.
Indeed, automated testing is less likely to be affected by human error.

When tests are automated, they run more frequently and with greater
consistency than when running tests manually. This can be bene cial when
dealing with a large codebase or when new features are added. In addition,
automation testing helps ensure that any errors or defects in the code are
identi ed and xed as quickly as possible.

2. Faster execution
Automated testing can also lead to faster execution of tests. This is because the
tests will run concurrently instead of serially. Running tests concurrently means
more tests run in a shorter amount of time.

3. Reduced costs
Automated testing can also lead to reduced costs. When tests are automated, the
need for manual testers is reduced. In addition, the time needed to execute tests
is reduced, leading to savings in terms of both time and money.
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 Moreover, automated tests can help reduce the cost of software development by
detecting and xing errors earlier in the process. They can also help reduce the
cost of supporting your application, as automated tests will need less time to nd
and x bugs.

4. More trustworthy results

Another bene t of automated testing is that it can lead to more reliable results.
This comes as a result of the fact that tests are run automatically and with greater
frequency. Automated software testing helps you quickly identify any issues or
regressions on your application, making it easier for you and your team to
address these problems as soon as they arise.

5. Increased ef ciency
Automated testing can help improve developer productivity by automating tasks
that would otherwise have to be done manually.

For example, you can con gure your continuous integration (CI) system to
automatically execute and monitor the results of your automated tests each time
a new feature or change is introduced into your application. This will help
ensure that any issues in the recent changes are identi ed and xed as quickly
as possible.

6. Increased collaboration between developers

Automated testing can help to improve collaboration between developers.
When you have a suite of computerized tests, other developers on your team
can rely on them when implementing new changes or features. This ensures that
a high level of code coverage is in place and reduces the likelihood of bugs in
newly added code.

7. Improved scalability
Automated tests can be used on many devices and con gurations, making it
easier to test more things at once.

For example, automated tests can be written to measure the performance of your
application on different devices or browsers. This allows you to more easily test
the different variations in which your application is being served and ensure that
these are running as expected across a variety of end-user devices.

The cons of automated testing

1. Complexity
Automated tests can take longer to develop than manual tests, especially if they
are not well designed. They can also be more challenging to implement into
your development workflow.

If your tests are complex or hard to maintain, it could lead to a reduction in the
quality of your test suite. This can have negative consequences for achieving
continuous testing throughout the application lifecycle.

That is why we developed a scripting language that is close to natural language

for our automated testing tool, UIlicious.
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 2. High initial costs
One of the main drawbacks of automated testing is that it initially takes a
signi cant amount of time and money to implement. However, this investment
can often be recouped very quickly in terms of improved developer
productivity and more trustworthy results.

Moreover, UIlicious offers affordable premium plans that anyone can afford. Our
objective is to make automation available to the most people on the web!

3. It needs to be rewritten for every new environment.

When you make a change in one environment, your automated tests will need to
be updated in order for the results to pass. Unfortunately, this means that you
will have to rewrite your automated test scripts in many different locations in
your local development environment, CI system, and production environments
to ensure that they work as expected.

This is the reason why we made UIlicious able to recognize web page elements
based on their labels, not only on their XPath or CSS. With our automation tool,
you can change your code as you want, if the user flow has not changed, you
will not need to adapt your test scripts.

3. Generates false positives and negatives

Automated tests can sometimes fail even when there is no actual issue present.
For example, this can be the case if the test contains an error or is not
comprehensive enough to cover all of its intended use cases. Similarly, your
tests may generate false negatives if they are designed only to verify that
something exists and not that it works as expected.

4. Dif cult to design tests that are both reliable and maintainable
Designing a comprehensive suite of automated tests is no small task. They need
to be reliable enough that they can be run frequently and consistently without
giving you false positives or negatives. On the other hand, your test scripts must
be maintainable enough to adapt to changes in your application. This requires a
high level of developer expertise and careful design and implementation.

5. Cannot be used on GUI elements (e.g., graphics, sound les)

While automated tests can be used to test most functionality of your application,
they are not suited to testing things like graphics or sound les. This is because
computerized tests typically use textual descriptions to verify the output.
Therefore, if you try using an automated test on a graphic or audio le, it will
likely fail every time, even if the content appears correct.

Selenium

- Introduction
Selenium is one of the most widely used open source Web UI (User Interface)
automation testing suite.It was originally developed by Jason Huggins in 2004 as
an internal tool at Thought Works. Selenium supports automation across different
browsers, platforms and programming languages.
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 Selenium can be easily deployed on platforms such as Windows, Linux, Solaris
and Macintosh. Moreover, it supports OS (Operating System) for mobile
applications like iOS, windows mobile and android.

Selenium supports a variety of programming languages through the use of

drivers speci c to each language.Languages supported by Selenium include
C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby.Currently, Selenium Web driver is most
popular with Java and C#. Selenium test scripts can be coded in any of the
supported programming languages and can be run directly in most modern
web browsers. Browsers supported by Selenium include Internet Explorer,
Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari.

Selenium can be used to automate functional tests and can be integrated with
automation test tools such as Maven, Jenkins, & Docker to achieve continuous
testing. It can also be integrated with tools such as TestNG, & JUnit for managing
test cases and generating reports.

- Selenium features,
• Selenium is an open source and portable Web testing Framework.
• Selenium IDE provides a playback and record feature for authoring tests
without the need to learn a test scripting language.
• It can be considered as the leading cloud-based testing platform which helps
testers to record their actions and export them as a reusable script with a
simple-to-understand and easy-to-use interface.
• Selenium supports various operating systems, browsers and programming
languages. Following is the list:
• Programming Languages: C#, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, and JavaScript
• Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris.
• Browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, Opera,
Safari, etc.
• It also supports parallel test execution which reduces time and increases the
ef ciency of tests.
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• Selenium can be integrated with frameworks like Ant and Maven for source
code compilation.
• Selenium can also be integrated with testing frameworks like TestNG for
application testing and generating reports.
• Selenium requires fewer resources as compared to other automation test tools.
• WebDriver API has been indulged in selenium whichis one of the most
important modi cations done to selenium.
• Selenium web driver does not require server installation, test scripts interact
directly with the browser.
• Selenium commands are categorized in terms of different classes which make
it easier to understand and implement.
• Selenium Remote Control (RC) in conjunction with WebDriver API is known as
Selenium 2.0. This version was built to support the vibrant web pages and
Ajax.

- JavaScript testing
JavaScript Unit Testing is a method in which JavaScript test code is written for a
web page or application module.

It is then combined with HTML as an inline event handler and executed in the
browser to test if all functionalities work as desired. These unit tests are then
organized in the test suite.

The following JavaScript Testing Frameworks are helpful for unit testing in
JavaScript. They are as follows:

1. Unit.js
An assertion library for Javascript runs on Node.js and the browser. It works
with any test runner and unit testing framework like Mocha, Jasmine, Karma,
protractor (E2E test framework for Angular apps), QUnit, etc.

2. Mocha
Mocha is a test framework running both in Node.js and in the browser. This
framework makes asynchronous testing simple by running tests serially. Mocha
tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate reporting while mapping
uncaught exceptions to the correct test case. It provides support for all
browsers, including the headless Chrome library and is convenient for the
developers to write test cases

3. Jest
It is an open-source testing framework built on JavaScript, designed majorly to
work with React and React Native-based web applications. Often, unit tests are
not very useful when run on the front end of any software. This is mostly because
unit tests for the front end require extensive, time-consuming con guration. This
complexity can be reduced to a great extent with the Jest framework.

4. Jasmine
Jasmine is a popular JavaScript behavior-driven development framework for unit
testing JavaScript applications. It provides utilities that run automated tests for
both synchronous and asynchronous code. It is also highly bene cial for front-
end testing.
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5. Karma
Karma is a node-based test tool allowing you to test your JavaScript codes across
multiple browsers. It makes test-driven development fast, fun, and easy and is
termed as a test-runner technically.

6. Cypress
Cypress framework is a JavaScript-based end-to-end testing framework built on
top of Mocha – a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on and in the
browser, making asynchronous testing simple and convenient Unit tests in
Cypress are executed without even having to run a web server. That makes
Cypress the ideal tool for testing a JS/TS library meant to be used in the
browser.

7. NightwatchJS
Nightwatch.js framework is a Selenium-based test automation framework written
in Node.js and uses the W3C WebDriver API (formerly Selenium WebDriver). It
communicates over a restful HTTP API with a WebDriver server (such as
ChromeDriver or Selenium Server). The protocol is de ned by the W3C
WebDriver spec, which is derived from the JSON Wire protocol.

- Testing backend integration points

What is Backend Testing?

Backend Testing is a testing method that
checks the database or server-side of the
web application. The main purpose of
backend testing is to check the application
layer and the database layer. It will nd an
error or bug in the database or server-
side.

For implementing backend testing, the

backend test engineer should also have
some knowledge about that particular
server-side or database language. It is
also known as Database Testing.

Importance of Backend Testing:

Backend testing is a must because
anything wrong or error happens at the
server-side, it will not further proceed
with that task or the output will get
differed or sometimes it will also cause
problems such as data loss, deadlock, etc.,

Integration Testing
Integration Testing is de ned as a type of testing where software modules are
integrated logically and tested as a group. A typical software project consists of
multiple software modules, coded by different programmers. The purpose of
this level of testing is to expose defects in the interaction between these
software modules when they are integrated
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Integration Testing focuses on checking data communication amongst these
modules. Hence it is also termed as ‘I & T’ (Integration and Testing), ‘String
Testing’ and sometimes ‘Thread Testing’.

Types of Integration Testing

Software Engineering de nes variety of strategies to execute Integration testing,
viz.
Big Bang Approach :
Incremental Approach: which is further divided into the following
Top Down Approach
Bottom Up Approach
Sandwich Approach – Combination of Top Down and Bottom Up

How to do Integration Testing?

The Integration test procedure irrespective of the Software testing strategies:
Prepare the Integration Tests Plan
Design the Test Scenarios, Cases, and Scripts.
Executing the test Cases followed by reporting the defects.
Tracking & re-testing the defects.
Steps 3 and 4 are repeated until the completion of Integration is successful.

- Test-driven development
Test Driven Development (TDD) is software development approach in which test
cases are developed to specify and validate what the code will do. In simple
terms, test cases for each functionality are created and tested rst and if the test
fails then the new code is written in order to pass the test and making code
simple and bug-free.

Test-Driven Development starts with designing and developing tests for every
small functionality of an application. TDD framework instructs developers to
write new code only if an automated test has failed. This avoids duplication of
code. The TDD full form is Test-driven development.
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The simple concept of TDD is to write and correct the failed tests before writing
new code (before development). This helps to avoid duplication of code as we
write a small amount of code at a time in order to pass tests. (Tests are nothing
but requirement conditions that we need to test to ful ll them).

Test-Driven development is a process of developing and running automated test

before actual development of the application. Hence, TDD sometimes also
called as Test First Development.

Following steps de ne how to perform TDD test,

• Add a test.
• Run all tests and see if any new test fails.
• Write some code.
• Run tests and Refactor code.
• Repeat

- REPL-driven development
REPL is short for read-evaluate-print-loop. It means an interactive terminal such
as your Bash shell or DOS command line interface, where you type a command
and see an immediate response. A command or expression is read and then
evaluated. The result is then printed to screen.

With REPL based development, testing and coding is more of a merged

interactive task. The way you go about it is not strictly de ned the way TDD is. It
is more of a loosely de ned practice and philosophy.
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 With a REPL approach you are continously running code and looking at outputs.
Every time you are typing a line of code you get to verify if you are doing a
sensible thing. If you get the wrong results, you can quickly bring the previous
line of code back from history with the ↑ arrow key and modify it.

Deployment of the system:

- Deployment systems
Deployment in DevOps is a process that enables you to retrieve important codes
from version control so that they can be made readily available to the public and
they can use the application in a ready-to-use and automated fashion.
Deployment tools DevOps comes into play when the developers of a particular
application are working on certain features that they need to build and
implement in the application. It is a very effective, reliable, and ef cient means
of testing and deploying organizational work.

Continuous deployment tools in DevOps simply mean updating the required

codes on a particular server. There can be multiple servers and you need the
required amount of tools to continuously update the codes and refresh the
website. The functionality of the DevOps continuous deployment tools can be
explained as follows:

• In the rst phase of testing, the DevOps codes are merged for internal testing.
• The next phase is staging where the client's test takes place as per their
requirements.
• Last but not least the production phase makes sure that any other feature does
not get impacted because of the updating these codes on the server.

DevOps deployment tools make the functionality of the servers very convenient
and easy for the users. It is different from the traditional way of dealing with the
applications and the improvement has given positive results to all the
companies as well as to all the users.

What are DevOps Deployment Tools?

DevOps tools make it convenient and easier for companies to reduce the
probability of errors and maintain continuous integration in operations. It
addresses the key aspects of a company. DevOps tools automate the whole
process and automatically build, test, and deploy the features.

DevOps tools make the whole deployment process and easy going one and they
can help you with the following aspects:
• Increased development.
• Improvement in operational ef ciency.
• Faster release.
• Non-stop delivery.
• Quicker rate of innovation.
• Improvement in collaboration.
• Seamless flow in the process chain.
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- Virtualization stack

It is the process of creating and running a virtual instance of something. In most

of the cases, there is a layer of abstraction between the actual hardware and the
virtual instance. That way, we can increase the capabilities of a system.

The various types

There are different types of virtualization:

1. Hardware Virtualization
It may be considered as the most common type these days. The best example of
it is a Virtual Machine. A virtual machine works and looks like a real system with
the same or a different operating system.

2. Network Virtualization
It is a process in which a combination of software and hardware network
resources form a single software network, which is commonly known as Virtual
Network. Also, the available bandwidth is divided into several independent
channels, which can be used by real devices and servers.

3. Desktop Virtualization
In the case of it, the logical or virtual desktop is separate from the physical
desktop. Here, instead of accessing the desktop using the computer hardware
like keyboard, mouse of the system, the desktop is located remotely from
another system by using a network connection. The network can be a wired/
wireless LAN or the internet. So, the user can access their les from any system
without physically operating the order that contains the data.

4. Storage Virtualization
In this case, a combination of several storage disks forms a storage pool or
group. These groups are virtual storage units. These can then be assigned to
servers for use. Logical volumes are one of the examples of it, which represent
the storage as a coherent unit rather than a physical unit.

5. Application Virtualization
In this, applications are virtualized and encapsulated. Virtual applications are
not installed like traditional applications but are used as they are installed.

6. Server Virtualization
This type comes in handy when we need to run a single physical server on
multiple operating systems simultaneously. With this process, the performance,
capacity and ef ciency of the server are increased, while managing costs and
complexity are reduced.

Role of Virtualization in DevOps

It plays a vital role in devops. It, automates various software development
processes, including testing and delivery. With the help of it, the its teams can
develop and test within virtual and simulated environments using similar
devices and systems to the end-users. This way, the development and testing
become more ef cient and less time-consuming. Virtual live environments can
also be provided to test the software at the deployment level. This helps in real-
time testing, as the team can check the effect of every new change made to the
software. By doing these tasks in virtualized environments, the amount of
computing resources is reduced. This real-time testing helps in increasing the
quality of the product. Working with a virtual environment reduces the time for
retesting and rebuilding the software for production. Thus, it reduces the extra
efforts for the devops team, while ensuring faster and reliable delivery.

What are the bene ts?

There are many perks of it, are below listed:
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1. The workload is reduced
The providers of it continuously update the hardware and software used for it, so
there is no need to do these updates locally. The IT staff of a company can focus
on other important things and save time and cost for the organization.

2. Testing Environment
With the help of it, we can set up a local testing environment. This environment
can be used for various kinds of testing for software. Even if a server crashes,
there won’t be any data loss. So, the reliability is increased, and the software can
be tested on this virtual environment until it is ready for live deployment.

3. Energy-saving
It saves energy as instead of using local software or servers; the virtualization
takes place with the help of virtual machines, which lowers the power or energy
utilization. By saving this energy, the cost is reduced, and this saved money can
be used for other useful operations.

4. Improving Hardware utilization

With it, the need for physical systems decreases. Thus, maintenance costs and
power utilization is reduced. The use of CPU and memory is improved.

What are the challenges?

Despite having several perks, virtualization in it also have some challenges or
limitations.

1. Time consumption
Even if the development and testing time is saved, but it still consumes much
time, as its con guration and application need time.

2. Security risk
There is a big chance of data breach with the process of it as the remote
accessibility and virtualizing desktop or applications is not a very secure option.

3. Infrastructure knowledge
To work with it, the IT staff should have expertise in virtualization. Hence, either
the existing employees can be trained, or new employees are required for an
organization if they want to start working with it and devops. It involves much
time and costs much money.

- code execution at the client,

- Puppet master and agents

Puppet is a con guration management technology to manage the infrastructure
on physical or virtual machines. It is an open-source software con guration
management tool developed using Ruby which helps in managing complex
infrastructure on the fly.

Puppet is a con guration management tool developed by Puppet Labs in order

to automate infrastructure management and con guration. Puppet is a very
powerful tool which helps in the concept of Infrastructure as code. This tool is
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 written in Ruby DSL language that helps in converting a complete infrastructure
in code format, which can be easily managed and con gured.

Puppet follows the client-server model, where one machine in any cluster acts
as the server, known as puppet master and the other acts as a client known as a
slave on nodes. Puppet has the capability to manage any system from scratch,
starting from initial con guration till the end-of-life of any particular machine.

Features of Puppet System

Following are the most important features of Puppet.

1. Idempotency
Puppet supports Idempotency which makes it unique. Similar to Chef, in Puppet,
one can safely run the same set of con guration multiple times on the same
machine. In this flow, Puppet checks for the current status of the target machine
and will only make changes when there is any speci c change in the
con guration.

Idempotency helps in managing any particular machine throughout its lifecycle

starting from the creation of machine, con gurational changes in the machine,
till the end-of-life. Puppet Idempotency feature is very helpful in keeping the
machine updated for years rather than rebuilding the same machine multiple
times, when there is any con gurational change.

2. Cross-platform
In Puppet, with the help of Resource Abstraction Layer (RAL) which uses Puppet
resources, one can target the speci ed con guration of system without worrying
about the implementation details and how the con guration command will work
inside the system, which are de ned in the underlying con guration le.
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 Puppet uses the following workflow to apply con guration on the system.

• In Puppet, the rst thing what the Puppet master does is to collect the details
of the target machine. Using the factor which is present on all Puppet nodes
(similar to Ohai in Chef) it gets all the machine level con guration details.
These details are collected and sent back to the Puppet master.

• Then the puppet master compares the retrieved con guration with de ned
con guration details, and with the de ned con guration it creates a catalog
and sends it to the targeted Puppet agents.

• The Puppet agent then applies those con gurations to get the system into a
desired state.

• Finally, once one has the target node in a desired state, it sends a report back
to the Puppet master, which helps the Puppet master in understanding where
the current state of the system is, as de ned in the catalog.

Puppet Archietecture

Puppet Master
Puppet Master is the key mechanism which handles all the con guration related
stuff. It applies the con guration to nodes using the Puppet agent.

Puppet Agent
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 Puppet Agents are the actual working machines which are managed by the
Puppet master. They have the Puppet agent daemon service running inside
them.

Con g Repository
This is the repo where all nodes and server-related con gurations are saved and
pulled when required.

Facts
Facts are the details related to the node or the master machine, which are
basically used for analyzing the current status of any node. On the basis of facts,
changes are done on any target machine. There are pre-de ned and custom
facts in Puppet.

Catalog
All the manifest les or con guration which are written in Puppet are rst
converted to a compiled format called catalog and later those catalogs are
applied on the target machine.

- Ansible
Ansible is simple open source IT engine which automates application
deployment, intra service orchestration, cloud provisioning and many other IT
tools.

Ansible is easy to deploy because it does not use any agents or custom security
infrastructure.

Ansible uses playbook to describe automation jobs, and playbook uses very
simple language i.e. YAML (It’s a human-readable data serialization language &
is commonly used for con guration les, but could be used in many applications
where data is being stored)which is very easy for humans to understand, read
and write. Hence the advantage is that even the IT infrastructure support guys
can read and understand the playbook and debug if needed (YAML – It is in
human readable form).

Ansible is designed for multi-tier deployment. Ansible does not manage one
system at time, it models IT infrastructure by describing all of your systems are
interrelated. Ansible is completely agentless which means Ansible works by
connecting your nodes through ssh(by default). But if you want other method for
connection like Kerberos, Ansible gives that option to you.

After connecting to your nodes, Ansible pushes small programs called as

“Ansible Modules”. Ansible runs that modules on your nodes and removes them
when nished. Ansible manages your inventory in simple text les (These are
the hosts le). Ansible uses the hosts le where one can group the hosts and can
control the actions on a speci c group in the playbooks.

How Ansible Works?

Ansible works by connecting to your nodes and pushing out small programs,
called "Ansible modules" to them. Ansible then executes these modules (over
SSH by default), and removes them when nished. Your library of modules can
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reside on any machine, and there are no servers, daemons, or databases
required.

The picture given below shows the working of Ansible.

The management node in the above picture is the controlling node (managing
node) which controls the entire execution of the playbook. It’s the node from
which you are running the installation. The inventory le provides the list of
hosts where the Ansible modules needs to be run and the management node
does a SSH connection and executes the small modules on the hosts machine
and installs the product/software.

Beauty of Ansible is that it removes the modules once those are installed so
effectively it connects to host machine , executes the instructions and if it’s
successfully installed removes the code which was copied on the host machine
which was executed.
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Deployment tools:

-Chef, Salt Stack and Docker.

Chef is an open source technology developed by Opscode. Adam Jacob, co-

founder of Opscode is known as the founder of Chef. This technology uses Ruby
encoding to develop basic building blocks like recipe and cookbooks. Chef is
used in infrastructure automation and helps in reducing manual and repetitive
tasks for infrastructure management.

Chef have got its own convention for different building blocks, which are
required to manage and automate infrastructure.

Why Chef?
Chef is a con guration management technology used to automate the
infrastructure provisioning. It is developed on the basis of Ruby DSL language. It
is used to streamline the task of con guration and managing the company’s
server. It has the capability to get integrated with any of the cloud technology.
In DevOps, we use Chef to deploy and manage servers and applications in-
house and on the cloud.

Features of Chef
Following are the most prominent features of Chef −
• Chef uses popular Ruby language to create a domain-speci c language.
• Chef does not make assumptions on the current status of a node. It uses its
mechanisms to get the current status of machine.
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 • Chef is ideal for deploying and managing the cloud server, storage, and
software.

Advantages of Chef
Chef offers the following advantages −
• Lower barrier for entry − As Chef uses native Ruby language for
con guration, a standard con guration language it can be easily picked up by
anyone having some development experience.
• Excellent integration with cloud − Using the knife utility, it can be easily
integrated with any of the cloud technologies. It is the best tool for an
organization that wishes to distribute its infrastructure on multi-cloud
environment.

Disadvantages of Chef
• Some of the major drawbacks of Chef are as follows −
• One of the huge disadvantages of Chef is the way cookbooks are controlled. It
needs constant babying so that people who are working should not mess up
with others cookbooks.
• Only Chef solo is available.
• In the current situation, it is only a good t for AWS cloud.
• It is not very easy to learn if the person is not familiar with Ruby.
• Documentation is still lacking.
Architecture
Chef works on a three-tier client server model wherein the working units such
as cookbooks are developed on the Chef workstation. From the command line
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 utilities such as knife, they are uploaded to the Chef server and all the nodes
which are present in the architecture are registered with the Chef server.

In order to get the working Chef infrastructure in place, we need to set up

multiple things in sequence.

The following components.

Chef Workstation
This is the location where all the con gurations are developed. Chef workstation
is installed on the local machine. Detailed con guration structure is discussed in
the later chapters of this tutorial.

Chef Server
This works as a centralized working unit of Chef setup, where all the
con guration les are uploaded post development. There are different kinds of
Chef server, some are hosted Chef server whereas some are built-in premise.

Chef Nodes
They are the actual machines which are going to be managed by the Chef
server. All the nodes can have different kinds of setup as per requirement. Chef
client is the key component of all the nodes, which helps in setting up the
communication between the Chef server and Chef node. The other components
of Chef node is Ohai, which helps in getting the current state of any node at a
given point of time.

Saltstack
Salt is a very powerful automation framework. Salt architecture is based on the
idea of executing commands remotely. All networking is designed around some
aspect of remote execution. This could be as simple as asking a Remote Web
Server to display a static Web page, or as complex as using a shell session to
interactively issue commands against a remote server. Salt is an example of one
of the more complex types of remote execution.

Salt is designed to allow users to explicitly target and issue commands to

multiple machines directly. Salt is based around the idea of a Master, which
controls one or more Minions. Commands are normally issued from the Master
to a target group of Minions, which then execute the tasks speci ed in the
commands and then return the resulting data back to the Master.
Communications between a master and minions occur over the ZeroMQ
message bus.

SaltStack modules communicate with the supported minion operating systems.

The Salt Master runs on Linux by default, but any operating system can be a
minion, and currently Windows, VMware vSphere and BSD Unix variants are
well supported. The Salt Master and the minions use keys to communicate.
When a minion connects to a master for the rst time, it automatically stores keys
on the master. SaltStack also offers Salt SSH, which provides an “agent less”
systems management.
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 Need for SaltStack
SaltStack is built for speed and scale. This is why it is used to manage large
infrastructures with tens of thousands of servers at LinkedIn, WikiMedia and
Google.

Imagine that you have multiple servers and want to do things to those servers.
You would need to login to each one and do those things one at a time on each
one and then you might want to do complicated things like installing software
and then con guring that software based on some speci c criteria.

Let us assume you have ten or maybe even 100 servers. Imagine logging in one
at a time to each server individually, issuing the same commands on those 100
machines and then editing the con guration les on all 100 machines becomes
very tedious task. To overcome those issues, you would love to update all your
servers at once, just by typing one single command. SaltStack provides you
exactly the solution for all such problems.

Features of SaltStack
SaltStack is an open-source con guration management software and remote
execution engine. Salt is a command-line tool. While written in Python, SaltStack
con guration management is language agnostic and simple. Salt platform uses
the push model for executing commands via the SSH protocol. The default
con guration system is YAML and Jinja templates. Salt is primarily competing
with Puppet, Chef and Ansible.

Salt provides many features when compared to other competing tools. Some of
these important features are listed below.

• Fault tolerance − Salt minions can connect to multiple masters at one time by
con guring the master con guration parameter as a YAML list of all the
available masters. Any master can direct commands to the Salt infrastructure.

• Flexible − The entire management approach of Salt is very flexible. It can be

implemented to follow the most popular systems management models such as
Agent and Server, Agent-only, Server-only or all of the above in the same
environment.

• Scalable Con guration Management − SaltStack is designed to handle ten

thousand minions per master.

• Parallel Execution model − Salt can enable commands to execute remote

systems in a parallel manner.

• Python API − Salt provides a simple programming interface and it was

designed to be modular and easily extensible, to make it easy to mold to
diverse applications.

• Easy to Setup − Salt is easy to setup and provides a single remote execution
architecture that can manage the diverse requirements of any number of
servers.
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 • Language Agnostic − Salt state con guration les, templating engine or le
type supports any type of language.

Bene ts of SaltStack
Being simple as well as a feature-rich system, Salt provides many bene ts and
they can be summarized as below −
• Robust − Salt is powerful and robust con guration management framework
and works around tens of thousands of systems.

• Authentication − Salt manages simple SSH key pairs for authentication.

• Secure − Salt manages secure data using an encrypted protocol.

• Fast − Salt is very fast, lightweight communication bus to provide the

foundation for a remote execution engine.

• Virtual Machine Automation − The Salt Virt Cloud Controller capability is

used for automation.

• Infrastructure as data, not code − Salt provides a simple deployment, model

driven con guration management and command execution framework.
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 Arhietechture

• SaltMaster − SaltMaster is the master daemon. A SaltMaster is used to send

commands and con gurations to the Salt slaves. A single master can manage
multiple masters.

• SaltMinions − SaltMinion is the slave daemon. A Salt minion receives

commands and con guration from the SaltMaster.

• Execution − Modules and Adhoc commands executed from the command line
against one or more minions. It performs Real-time Monitoring.

• Formulas − Formulas are pre-written Salt States. They are as open-ended as

Salt States themselves and can be used for tasks such as installing a package,
con guring and starting a service, setting up users or permissions and many
other common tasks.

• Grains − Grains is an interface that provides information speci c to a minion.

The information available through the grains interface is static. Grains get
loaded when the Salt minion starts. This means that the information in grains
is unchanging. Therefore, grains information could be about the running
kernel or the operating system. It is case insensitive.

• Pillar − A pillar is an interface that generates and stores highly sensitive data
speci c to a particular minion, such as cryptographic keys and passwords. It
stores data in a key/value pair and the data is managed in a similar way as
the Salt State Tree.

• Top File − Matches Salt states and pillar data to Salt minions.

• Runners − It is a module located inside the SaltMaster and performs tasks

such as job status, connection status, read data from external APIs, query
connected salt minions and more.
• Returners − Returns data from Salt minions to another system.

• Reactor − It is responsible for triggering reactions when events occur in your

SaltStack environment.

• SaltCloud − Salt Cloud provides a powerful interface to interact with cloud

hosts.

• SaltSSH − Run Salt commands over SSH on systems without using Salt minion.
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