Chef Configuration and Provisioning Tool Announced

Posted by Charlie Martin on Jan 26, 2009

Sections

Architecture & Design,

Development,

Operations & Infrastructure

Topics

Architecture ,

Configuration Management ,

Cloud Computing ,

Ruby ,

Deployment / Datacenter

Tags

Rake ,

OSS

Chef is a new open-source system integration, configuration management and provisioning application, released under the Apache 2.0 license by Opscode, in Seattle, Washington.  Chef operates by defining system nodes, cookbooks for performing administrative tasks, and libraries for defining interactions with other tools such as applications, databases, and system administration resources like LDAP directories.

Chef is implemented as a Ruby-based DSL which is interpreted by Chef clients, working under the direction of a Chef server.  Clients authenticate themselves to the server using OpenID, then synchronize the needed resources and libraries automatically.  These resources are then used by the client to perform steps toward configuring the client node, a process called convergence.  The ideal is that the configuration should be completed in one step; if it can't be, then the goal is for the client to make progress with later invocations in order to "converge" on the desired final state. 

While Chef has just been announced, and is still an early version, it is being used in production in several installations.

1. Back to top

   Just to clarify...

   by Adam Jacob

   If Chef can't configure your system in a single run, we believe it's a bug (either in your cookbooks or in Chef.)
   
   Convergence gives us graceful failures - not slow success. :)

   Reply

2. Back to top

   Re: Just to clarify...

   by Charlie Martin

   Thanks, Adam. That's as I'd understood it, I appreciate the clarification.

   Reply

• Older >