Progress Chef (formerly Chef) is a

configuration management Configuration management (CM) is a management process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. ...

tool written in

Ruby Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...

and Erlang. It uses a pure-Ruby,

domain-specific language A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging ...

(DSL) for writing system configuration "recipes". Chef is used to streamline the task of configuring and maintaining a company's servers, and can integrate with cloud-based platforms such as

Amazon EC2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ap ...

Google Cloud Platform Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, Computer data storage, data storage, Data analysis, data analytics, and machine learnin ...

Oracle Cloud Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows th ...

OpenStack OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software pla ...

IBM Cloud IBM Cloud (formerly known as Bluemix) is a set of cloud computing services for business offered by the information technology company IBM. Services As of 2021, IBM Cloud contains more than 170 services including compute, storage, networkin ...

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

, and

Rackspace Rackspace Technology, Inc. is an American cloud computing company based in San Antonio, Texas. It also has offices in Blacksburg, Virginia, Blacksburg, Virginia and Austin, Texas, as well as in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, India, Dubai, Sw ...

to automatically provision and configure new machines. Chef contains solutions for both small and large scale systems.

Features

The user writes "recipes" that describe how Chef manages server applications and utilities (such as

Apache HTTP Server The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source cross-platform web server, released under the terms of Apache License, Apache License 2.0. It is developed and maintained by a community of developers under the ...

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

, or

Hadoop Apache Hadoop () is a collection of Open-source software, open-source software utilities for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. It provides a software framework for Clustered file system, distributed storage and processing of big data usin ...

) and how they are to be configured. These recipes (which can be grouped together as a "cookbook" for easier management) describe a series of resources that should be in a particular state: packages that should be installed, services that should be running, or files that should be written. These various resources can be configured to specific versions of software to run and can ensure that software is installed in the correct order based on dependencies. Chef makes sure each resource is properly configured and corrects any resources that are not in the desired state. Chef can run in client/server mode, or in a standalone configuration named "chef-solo". In client/server mode, the Chef client sends various attributes about the node to the Chef server. The server uses

Elasticsearch Elasticsearch is a Search engine (computing), search engine based on Apache Lucene, a free and open-source search engine. It provides a distributed, Multitenancy, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema ...

to index these attributes and provides an API for clients to query this information. Chef recipes can query these attributes and use the resulting data to help configure the node. Traditionally, Chef was used to manage

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

but later versions add support for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It is one of the major configuration management systems on Linux, along with

CFEngine CFEngine is a configuration management system, written by Mark Burgess. Its primary function is to provide automated configuration and maintenance of large-scale computer systems, including the unified management of servers, desktops, consume ...

Ansible The term ''ansible'' refers to a category of fictional technological devices capable of superluminal Faster-than-light (superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than ...

and

Puppet A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or Legendary creature, mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. Puppetry is an ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in anci ...

.. More than a configuration management tool, Chef, along with Puppet and Ansible, is one of the industry's most notable Infrastructure as Code (IAC) tools.

History

Opscode

Chef was created by Adam Jacob as a tool for his consulting company, whose business model was to build end-to-end server/deployment tools. Jacob showed Chef to

Jesse Robbins Jesse Robbins is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and firefighter notable for his pioneering work in Cloud computing, role in creating DevOps/ Chaos Engineering, and efforts to improve emergency management. Career Robbins is a v ...

, who saw its potential after running operations at

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

. They founded a new company (Opscode) with Barry Steinglass, Nathen Haneysmith, and Joshua Timberman to turn Chef into a product. The company Chief Technology Officer was Adam Jacob. Chef Software, Inc. was a corporation headquartered in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...

. The project was originally named "marionette", but the word was too long and cumbersome to type; naming the format modules were prepared in "recipe" led to the project being renamed "Chef". In February 2013, Opscode released version 11 of Chef. Changes in this release included a complete rewrite of the core

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

server in Erlang. In Sep 2015, Chef Chef was valued at $360 million after a $40 million venture capital funding round. In November 2015, the company acquired a German security startup, VulcanoSec. In April 2019, the company announced that the source code for their software would continue to be released under the Apache 2.0 license, while binaries would only be available under the terms of a proprietary license. In response, the Cinc project began releasing Apache 2.0 licensed binaries of several Chef products. In 2019, it was discovered by a journalist that

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE; ) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the Un ...

was paying Chef approximately $95,000 per year for a software license. At that time, a former Chef employee deleted his code repository in protest of the contract. The company did not announce any changes to its contracting processes or partners.

Chef Automate

Chef offered a single commercial product, Chef Automate, released at ChefConf in July 2016. Chef Automate included a full-stack continuous deployment pipeline, and automated testing for compliance and security. Chef Automate built on two of Chef's open source projects - Chef and InSpec - and integrated with the company's third open source project, Habitat. Habitat offered "application automation" to simplify running complex applications in different environments including containers, traditional data servers, or PaaS. Chef offered three versions of its product: Chef Basics (free, open source), Hosted Chef ($72/node, minimum 20 node purchase), and Chef Automate ($137/node, annual subscription).

Progress

On September 8, 2020,

Progress Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...

announced the acquisition of Chef, with an intended final date in October. A press release gave the price of acquisition at $220 million. The merged company was named Progress Chef.

Platform support

Chef is supported on multiple platforms according to a supported platforms matrix for client and server products. Major platform support for clients includes

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *Alternate index, for an IBM Virtual Storage Access Method key-sequenced data set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belg ...

, Amazon Linux,

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

RHEL Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. Fedora Linux and CentOS St ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

SUSE Linux openSUSE () is a free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable release distribution which is so ...

and

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

. Additional client platforms include

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an Open-source software, open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant ...

and

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

. Chef Server is supported on

amd64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new operating modes: 64-bit mode an ...

Oracle Linux Oracle Linux (abbreviated OL, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux or OEL) is a Linux distribution packaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006. It is, in part, compile ...

and

Customers

Chef is used by

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (abbreviated OSM) is a free, Open Database License, open geographic database, map database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveying, surveys, trace from Ae ...

AWS OpsWorks Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis. Clients will often use this in combination wit ...

Prezi Prezi is a Hungarian video and visual communications software company founded in 2009 in Hungary, with offices in San Francisco, Budapest and Riga as of 2020. According to Prezi, in 2021, the software company has more than 100 million users worl ...

, and

BlackLine BlackLine Systems, Inc., is an American enterprise software company that develops cloud-based services designed to automate and manage the entire financial close process as well as consolidation, invoice-to-cash, and intercompany accounting. The ...

References

External links

* {{Ruby programming language Free software programmed in Ruby Free software programmed in Erlang Configuration management Orchestration software Virtualization software for Linux Software using the Apache license