Opscode Chef
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CommentsWhat is Chef?
Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure with no downtime or interruptions. Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to another. Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace, OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.
Chef is a tool in the Continuous Deployment category of a tech stack.
Key Features
Access to 800+ Reusable CookbooksIntegration with Leading Cloud ProvidersEnterprise Platform Support including Windows and SolarisCreate, Bootstrap and Manage OpenStack CloudsEasy Installation with 'one-click' Omnibus InstallerAutomatic System Discovery with OhaiText-Based Search CapabilitiesMultiple Environment Support"Knife" Command Line Interface"Dry Run" Mode for Testing Potential ChangesManage 10,000+ Nodes on a Single Chef ServerAvailable as a Hosted ServiceCentralized Activity and Resource Reporting"Push" Command and Control Client RunsMulti-TenancyRole-Based Access Control [RBAC]High Availability Installation Support and VerificationCentralized Authentication Using LDAP or Active Directory
Chef Pros & Cons
Pros of Chef
- ✓Dynamic and idempotent server configuration
- ✓Reusable components
- ✓Integration testing with Vagrant
- ✓Repeatable
- ✓Mock testing with Chefspec
- ✓Ruby
- ✓Can package cookbooks to guarantee repeatability
- ✓Works with AWS
- ✓Has marketplace where you get readymade cookbooks
- ✓Matured product with good community support
Cons of Chef
No cons listed yet.
Chef Alternatives & Comparisons
What are some alternatives to Chef?
Ansible
Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates. Ansible’s goals are foremost those of simplicity and maximum ease of use.
Terraform
With Terraform, you describe your complete infrastructure as code, even as it spans multiple service providers. Your servers may come from AWS, your DNS may come from CloudFlare, and your database may come from Heroku. Terraform will build all these resources across all these providers in parallel.
Dotenv
It is a zero-dependency module that loads environment variables from a .env file into process.env. Storing configuration in the environment separate from code is based on The Twelve-Factor App methodology.
