Node Management agent

The Node Management agent is a skill that manages other skills on a node.

The Node Management agent is responsible for:

• Managing credentials on nodes.
• Managing the desired state of skills on nodes as defined in the skill assembly.
• Managing the desired skill settings as defined by the skill’s global default settings or override settings.
• Reporting the node’s status.
• Managing node attributes.

Register the Node Management agent

Before defining other skills and their settings, you must create a skill definition for the Node Management agent skill and define its settings as global default settings. This is important because the Node Management agent is the first skill installed during node enrollment. Without it, the other skills in a skill assembly can’t be installed.

To register the Node Management agent in Chef 360 Platform, follow these steps:

1. Create a file named register-agent-skill.json that defines the Node Management agent settings:

   {
   "bldrUrl": "<HABITAT_BUILDER_URL>",
   "bldrChannel": "<CHANNEL>",
   "bldrAuthToken": "<TOKEN>",
   "nodeCheckinInterval": <CHECK_IN_INTERVAL>,
   "updateSkillMetadataInterval": <UPDATE_SKILL_INTERVAL>,
   "logLevel": "<LOG_LEVEL>"
   }
   

   Replace:

   • <HABITAT_BUILDER_URL> with the Chef Habitat Builder URL. Use https://bldr.habitat.sh for Chef’s Habitat Builder or the URL of your own Habitat Builder deployment.

   • <CHANNEL> with the release channel from which to install skills. For example, stable.

   • <TOKEN> with the authentication token for Habitat Builder. If you’re using Chef’s Habitat Builder, set this to an empty string.

   • <CHECK_IN_INTERVAL> with the interval (in seconds) at which check-in occurs. Values start at 3600 (1 hour).

     The check-in interval splay is automatically set to a value between 0 and half the check-in interval time.

   • <UPDATE_SKILL_INTERVAL> with the interval (in seconds) at which skill definitions are updated. Values start at 3600 (1 hour).

     The update skill interval splay is automatically set to a value between 0 and half the check-in interval time.

   • <LOG_LEVEL>: The logging level of the agent. For example, debug.

     Supported log levels:

     debug

     Reports detailed information that can aid in identifying issues or debugging a workload. This includes the info, warn, and error logs.

     info

     Reports general information about the system’s operations.

     warn

     Reports potential failures, but the operation can continue functioning for the time being.

     error

     Reports errors that prevent the execution of an operation.

2. Create the skill assembly:

   chef-node-management-cli management skill update-agent --body-file register-agent-skill.json
   

   It returns the following response:

   {
    "code" : 200,
    "message" : update-agent successful
   }