Ruby Training — Chef Automation, Legacy DevOps Tooling & Infrastructure Scripting

Why Ruby Matters in DevOps & Automation

Ruby's significance in DevOps is largely tied to the tools written in it: Chef (cookbooks are Ruby), Vagrant (Vagrantfile is Ruby), Puppet (originally Ruby-based, though now has its own DSL), Capistrano (deployment automation), and Serverspec/Test Kitchen (infrastructure testing). While Ruby's role in new DevOps tooling has diminished (Go and Python dominate now), legacy Ruby-based infrastructure — particularly Chef deployments — still runs in many enterprises. This course teaches Ruby specifically for maintaining and extending Ruby-based DevOps tooling.

Current Relevance

Ruby is a niche DevOps language — essential for Chef-heavy enterprises, useful for Vagrant and infrastructure testing, but not a recommended first language for DevOps automation (Python is). This course is for engineers who need to work with existing Ruby-based tooling. For new automation, Python is the recommended choice.

Who Should Attend

• DevOps engineers maintaining Chef infrastructure
• Infrastructure engineers writing custom Chef resources and libraries
• Teams with Ruby-based automation (Vagrant, Capistrano, Serverspec)

Learning Outcomes

• Write Ruby scripts for infrastructure automation
• Develop Chef custom resources and libraries in Ruby
• Write infrastructure tests with Serverspec and Test Kitchen
• Customize Vagrant with Ruby-based Vagrantfiles
• Understand and maintain legacy Ruby-based DevOps tooling

Course Modules

1. Ruby Fundamentals — Syntax, objects, blocks, modules. Ruby's philosophy. Differences from Python.
2. Ruby for Chef Development — Custom resources. Libraries. Ohai plugins. Knife plugins. Recipe DSL.
3. Infrastructure Testing with Ruby — Serverspec. Test Kitchen with Ruby-based tests. RSpec for infrastructure.
4. Ruby for Vagrant — Vagrantfile configuration. Custom Vagrant plugins. Vagrant + Chef/Puppet integration.
5. Ruby Automation Scripts — Thor CLI tools. File and system operations. REST API integration.
6. Capstone: Ruby Automation — Extend Chef with custom resources, write Serverspec tests, automate with Vagrant.

Related Courses

See Chef Training, Python for DevOps, and Platform Engineering.