Chef Software
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Predecessor | Opscode |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Adam Jacob, Jesse Robbins, Barry Steinglass, Nathen Haneysmith, Joshua Timberman |
| Headquarters | Seattle , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Adam Jacob (CTO at founding) |
| Products | Chef, Chef Automate, Habitat, InSpec |
| Owner | Progress |
| Parent | Progress |
| Website | www |
Progress Chef (previously known simply as Chef) is a configuration management solution created by Progress, developed using Ruby and Erlang. It employs a domain-specific language (DSL) built purely in Ruby to craft system configuration "recipes." Chef simplifies the process of setting up and managing enterprise servers, offering integration with numerous cloud services such as Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud, OpenStack, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace to facilitate automated provisioning and configuration. The platform caters to environments ranging from small setups to extensive infrastructures.
Features
Administrators create "recipes" that instruct Chef on how to configure server applications and tools like Apache HTTP Server, MySQL, and Hadoop, along with their settings. These recipes can be organized into collections called "cookbooks" to enhance manageability. Within these, resources—such as software packages, running services, or file modifications—are defined, allowing precise control over software versions and installation sequences based on dependency relationships. Chef guarantees that each resource is correctly applied and automatically rectifies any inconsistencies.
Chef functions either in a client/server architecture or independently via "chef-solo." When operating in client/server mode, the Chef client transmits node-specific attributes to the Chef server, which indexes this information using Elasticsearch and exposes an API for data retrieval. Recipes can utilize this node data to tailor configurations accordingly.
Originally designed for Linux platforms, Chef has expanded its compatibility to include Microsoft Windows systems. It ranks among the top configuration management tools alongside competitors like CFEngine, Ansible, and Puppet. Beyond its core functionality, Chef is acknowledged as a significant contributor within the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) sector.
Opscode
Chef was developed by Adam Jacob initially as part of his consulting firm's suite of end-to-end server and deployment utilities. Jesse Robbins, drawing on his Amazon experience, recognized its promise, leading to collaboration among Jacob, Robbins, Barry Steinglass, Nathen Haneysmith, and Joshua Timberman to establish Opscode. This company aimed to commercialize Chef, with Adam Jacob serving as Chief Technology Officer. Opscode was based in Seattle, Washington.
The project was originally called "marionette," but this name was replaced by "Chef" due to the original being unwieldy and the terminology of "recipe" used for configuration scripts.
In February 2013, Opscode launched Chef version 11, which introduced a complete overhaul of the core API server rewritten in Erlang.
By September 2015, after securing $40 million in venture capital funding, Chef's valuation reached $360 million. Later that year in November, Opscode broadened its product range by acquiring VulcanoSec, a German cybersecurity startup, and introduced a new compliance-focused offering.
In April 2019, Chef announced a licensing change: while the source code would continue under the Apache 2.0 license, the distribution of binaries would shift to a proprietary license model. This move led to the emergence of the Cinc project, which began providing Apache 2.0 licensed binaries for various Chef components.
Also in 2019, reports surfaced that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had paid approximately $95,000 per year for Chef software licenses. This association sparked internal dissent within the company but did not result in any public alterations to partnerships or corporate policies.
Chef Automate
Introduced at ChefConf in July 2016, Chef Automate stands as Chef's premier commercial offering, providing an all-encompassing continuous deployment pipeline that incorporates automated compliance and security verification. This solution merges two foundational open source projects—Chef and InSpec—and integrates with Habitat, Chef's application automation platform aimed at streamlining the management of complex applications across containers, traditional servers, and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments.
Chef Automate was available in three distinct editions: Chef Basics (a free, open source version), Hosted Chef (priced at $72 per node with a minimum of 20 nodes), and Chef Automate (offered as an annual subscription at $137 per node).
Progress
On September 8, 2020, Progress revealed its acquisition of Chef for $220 million, completing the transaction in October. This strategic union resulted in the formation of Progress Chef, blending Progress’s enterprise software strengths with Chef’s automation proficiency.
Platform support
Chef accommodates a wide array of platforms for both its client and server components. Supported client operating systems include AIX, Amazon Linux, Debian, CentOS/RHEL, FreeBSD, macOS, Solaris, SUSE Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Ubuntu, along with additional compatibility for Arch Linux and Fedora. The Chef Server operates on amd64 architecture and supports RHEL/CentOS, Oracle Linux, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu platforms.
Customers
Notable enterprises leveraging Chef include Facebook, OpenStreetMap, AWS OpsWorks, Prezi, and BlackLine.
See also
- Comparison of open-source configuration management software
- Infrastructure as code (IaC)
- Infrastructure as Code Tools
- Ansible (software)
- CFEngine (software)
- DevOps
- DevOps toolchain
- Otter (software)
- Puppet
- Salt (software)
- Juju