Deleting a node from the Chef server

Bootstrapping a node not only installs Chef on that node, but creates a client object on the Chef server as well. Running the Chef client on your node uses the client object to authenticate itself against the Chef server on each run.

Additionally, to registering a client, a node object is created on the Chef server. The node object is the main data structure, which you can use to query node data inside your recipes.

Getting ready

Make sure you have at least one node registered on your Chef server that is safe to remove.

How to do it...

Let's delete the node and client object to completely remove a node from the Chef server.

1. Delete the node object:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ knife node delete my_node
   

   Do you really want to delete my_node? (Y/N) y
   Deleted node[my_node]

2. Delete the client object:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ knife client delete my_node
   

   Do you really want to delete my_node? (Y/N) y
   Deleted client[my_node]

How it works...

To keep your Chef server clean, it's important to not only manage your node objects but to also take care of your client objects, as well.

Knife connects to the Chef server and deletes the node object with a given name, using the Chef server RESTful API.

The same happens while deleting the client object on the Chef server.

After deleting both objects, your node is totally removed from the Chef server. Now, you can reuse the same node name with a new box or virtual machine.

There's more...

It is a bit tedious and error prone when you have to issue two commands. To simplify things, you can use a knife plugin called playground.

1. Run the chef command-line tool to install the knife plugin:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ chef gem install knife-playground
   

   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...
   Installing knife-playground (0.2.2)

2. Run the knife pg clientnode delete subcommand:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ knife pg clientnode delete my_node
   

   Deleting CLIENT my_node...
   Do you really want to delete my_node? (Y/N) y
   Deleted client[my_node]
   Deleting NODE my_node...
   Do you really want to delete my_node? (Y/N) y
   Deleted node[my_node]

See also

• Read about how to do this when using Vagrant in the Managing virtual machines with Vagrant recipe in this recipe
• Read about how to set up your Chef server and register your nodes in the Using the hosted Chef platform recipe in this chapter