As I mentioned in my previous post, I would like to introduce a project I have recently started which is a Chef cookbook about system healthcheck.

The idea is to generate a healthcheck page based on results of running Serverspec tests.  Specifically, it would be helpful for load balancers and more specifically for AWS ELB healthcheck. According to Serverspec: it tests your servers’ actual state by executing command locally, via SSH, via WinRM, via Docker API and so on. So you don’t need to install any agent softwares on your servers and can use any configuration management tools. But the true aim of Serverspec is to help refactoring infrastructure code. Load Balancers check health of system using this healthcheck URL and stop sending traffic if it’s not healthy. The generated health check page can be handy for this URL then. If self-check fails, it will return an error status code, otherwise 200 status code. In this cookbook, 2 concepts are used:

• Infrastructure test as code using Serverspec: It’s best if we have a test-driven infrastructure as code but even if there is no code for infrastructure, this cookbook can still help!
• Loadbalancer healthcheck: if healthchek page is comprehensive enough, this check can help in having a high available system. In case of AWS, when ELB is accompanied by Auto Scaling Group, a new healthy instance will replace the bad one if ELB notices an issue.

So, if you are interested in test driven coding especially in infrastructure, please have a look. Looking forward to hear your feedbacks.