The apache2 cookbook comes with a definition called `web_app` for doing just this thing. Example usage might look something like this: array_of_apps.each do | app | web_app app do template "web_app.conf.erb" docroot "#{node['apps']['dir']}/#{app}" server_name "#{app}.#{node['fqdn']}" server_aliases "#{app}.#{node['fqdn']}" notifies :restart, resources("service[apache2]") end end This example assumes each app has a subdirectory at node['apps']['dir'] that will become the docroot for the vhost and you would like a subdomain created for each app. The actual array of apps/vhost names to iterate over should probably come from a data bag so adding new vhosts wouldn't require a code/cookbook update! Yeah data-driven infrastructure.