Summary

In this chapter, we saw how the new 12.5 version of Chef has brought us the Custom Resource, and we explored how the Custom Resource has improved upon the old concept of LWRPs and HWRPs. We realized that Chef has built-in resources for a lot of things, but not for creating websites. Therefore, you learned how to create a new "website" Custom Resource. We expanded on the website resource to make it easy to use in different cookbooks, and expanded it even further so that we can use it for cookbooks that will be converged in multiple operating systems. By now, you should really appreciate the humble Custom Resource. It is a great improvement over the old Resource Provider model and can greatly simplify your recipes.

Next, let's dive into the use of Chef to provision into the traditional datacenter. There is a lot to cover, so let's get started.