Chef Automate (First 10 nodes free)
Chef | 1.8.85Linux/Unix, CentOS 7.2 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
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Great documentation and training
What do you like best about the product?
Learn Chef and online documentation are both top-notch.
Learn Chef has been invaluable for our team and is probably one of the best free vendor-hosted training tools we've encountered with any of our vendors.
Learn Chef has been invaluable for our team and is probably one of the best free vendor-hosted training tools we've encountered with any of our vendors.
What do you dislike about the product?
Our most significant issue is keeping up as the product evolves. We are still using Berkshelf and are struggling to find the time to learn about policy files to facilitate the transition away from Berkshelf.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
First and foremost, we use Chef for the configuration management of our Windows Servers. In the past, we used a lot of PowerShell scripts and Group Policy to manage configuration. As our environment grew and we went from one or two Active Directory domains to five or six, Group Policy became more problematic. Chef has allowed us to utilize the same configuration source regardless of the domain the system resides in and even for those not in an AD Domain.
Now that we are managing most of our Windows Server configuration with Chef, we are now moving into using Chef for compliance purposes.
Now that we are managing most of our Windows Server configuration with Chef, we are now moving into using Chef for compliance purposes.
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Progress Chef review.
What do you like best about the product?
I like their support and Chef meetings plus Chef is easy to manage and implement when the company has great support, it does adds to the value of the product.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing, it's a great product, and it is very well supportred.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
If there is a problem, we report it at the meetings and it usually gets quickly resolved.
Powerful Open Source Configuration Management on another level!
What do you like best about the product?
In my experience, Progress Chef has several strengths that make it a compelling choice for organizations looking to streamline their infrastructure management.
Firstly, Chef's declarative language makes it easy to define and manage the desired state of infrastructure components. By defining "recipes" and "cookbooks" that describe the desired configuration of each resource, Chef ensures that the infrastructure remains consistent and predictable across environments.
Another strength of Chef is its flexibility and extensibility. Chef has a large community of users and contributors who have created a wide range of plugins, integrations, and cookbooks that can be used to automate everyday tasks and integrate with other tools. This makes Progress Chef easy to customize Chef to suit an organisation's specific needs, whether a small startup or a large enterprise.
Firstly, Chef's declarative language makes it easy to define and manage the desired state of infrastructure components. By defining "recipes" and "cookbooks" that describe the desired configuration of each resource, Chef ensures that the infrastructure remains consistent and predictable across environments.
Another strength of Chef is its flexibility and extensibility. Chef has a large community of users and contributors who have created a wide range of plugins, integrations, and cookbooks that can be used to automate everyday tasks and integrate with other tools. This makes Progress Chef easy to customize Chef to suit an organisation's specific needs, whether a small startup or a large enterprise.
What do you dislike about the product?
However, like any tool, Progress Chef also has some potential drawbacks. For example, it can have a steep learning curve, especially for those new to infrastructure automation or programming. Additionally, Chef's complexity and flexibility can sometimes make troubleshooting problems or maintaining large codebases difficult.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Progress Chef helps me to solve the following problems in my IT environment:
Ensuring consistency: With Chef, IT professionals can define the desired configuration of each component in their infrastructure as code. This ensures that the infrastructure remains consistent and predictable across environments, reducing the risk of human error and simplifying troubleshooting.
Automating tasks: Chef allows IT professionals to automate many of the tasks involved in managing infrastructure, such as provisioning new servers, deploying applications, and configuring network settings. This can save significant time and effort, freeing IT professionals to focus on higher-level tasks.
Scaling infrastructure: Chef makes it easier to scale infrastructure resources up or down in response to changing demand. This can help organizations save costs by only using the resources they need, and it can also improve reliability and performance by allowing resources to be added or removed as needed.
Improving security: Chef can help IT professionals improve the security of their infrastructure by automating the configuration of security settings and policies, such as firewalls and access controls. This can help reduce the risk of security breaches and ensure that the infrastructure remains compliant with relevant regulations and standards.
Ensuring consistency: With Chef, IT professionals can define the desired configuration of each component in their infrastructure as code. This ensures that the infrastructure remains consistent and predictable across environments, reducing the risk of human error and simplifying troubleshooting.
Automating tasks: Chef allows IT professionals to automate many of the tasks involved in managing infrastructure, such as provisioning new servers, deploying applications, and configuring network settings. This can save significant time and effort, freeing IT professionals to focus on higher-level tasks.
Scaling infrastructure: Chef makes it easier to scale infrastructure resources up or down in response to changing demand. This can help organizations save costs by only using the resources they need, and it can also improve reliability and performance by allowing resources to be added or removed as needed.
Improving security: Chef can help IT professionals improve the security of their infrastructure by automating the configuration of security settings and policies, such as firewalls and access controls. This can help reduce the risk of security breaches and ensure that the infrastructure remains compliant with relevant regulations and standards.
Gets the job done in a nice and easy way
What do you like best about the product?
Automation has never been so easy to do, whether it is a server or other software-related workload; the progressive chef is handy has always been a forte. My team started using progressive chef before puppet or even ansible, and it's still everyone's favorite
What do you dislike about the product?
Not everyone had it easy with how to use it from the start, but after a while, everyone was alright. Create more developer advocates and communities around the product.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Devops tooling for the automation of our software systems. We used chef to automate our Quality Assurance environment before deploying it into production. We have been able to reduce technical debt and go faster then if we were not using it
devops engineer
What do you like best about the product?
large community of users, lots of resources on the web.
What do you dislike about the product?
nothing so far, not sure why i cant submit this
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
automation, configuration as code for linux and windows systems
Chef has always been innovative and continues to be now that they are in the Progress family..
What do you like best about the product?
The Progress Chef team is responsive and reachable. They react to concerns and are always ready to help. The tools are best-of-breed and are constantly being improved.
What do you dislike about the product?
Documentation of new features can often be a bit sparse, and discovering said new changes can be a bit difficult. Documentation also varies in detail level and scope.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
First and foremost, compliance. InSpec is completely a game changer in that regard. Ensuring consistency across the enterprise is another huge benefit. I would recommend InSpex (and have) to anyone facing technical compliance issues.
Chef Review - Continuous Configuration & Compliance
What do you like best about the product?
With Chef, we are able to manage nodes in a new way. Our clients get insight into the health, configuration, and compliance of their system in a single platform. Also, since everything is in code, the ways to customize cookbooks, inspec profiles, and tailor policy for each node are limitless.
What do you dislike about the product?
The Chef community definitely has some growing to do. Progress Chef has been making an effort to listen to community members and they need to continue their journey of building up the community to what it once was.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Continued enforcement. Knowing that my nodes are checking in regularly so that I can pin point when something unexpected occurs is huge. The automate dashboard gives me visibility at a glance to track down anomolies.
Chef Experience
What do you like best about the product?
We have used Chef for 10+ years as our configuration management tool. The Chef Infra infrastructure has been robust and provided a stable platform for us to develop against. The out of box functionality solves many of our use cases and the Chef DSL provides enough extensibility that we can create functionality for our specific use cases.
What do you dislike about the product?
My main dislike about Chef is the care and feeding required to perform a chef-client update. Usually, taking a chef-client upgrade takes us at least a month to work through rolling it out across our organization. We have chef-client running daemonized in many environments, and the upgrade process stops the automatic runs for about a 24-hour period, which means we could have server drift during this window. This means we have to be picky about which version of chef-client we run, and usually wait until a new major version is released, upgrade, and then sit on that version until EOL. Ideally, we'd love to keep that current as much as possible.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The main business process Chef is helping us to resolve is keeping our fleet of servers standardized and consistent. It allows us to use automation and code to keep systems up to date and current with our standards and reduces our reliance on humans to do much of that work.
Amazing Conference for Newbies!
What do you like best about the product?
The flexibility to attend virtually was very convenient, which helped me to participate in the conference at my own pace. The way marketing was done to attend the meeting was also fantastic.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing that I could think of. Maybe LinkedIn marketing about the conference would be much better as I personally think that many more audience could have attended.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Problems about automation, enhancements and feature updates were terrific and how Chef solves them with an automated process is very beneficial.
chef tools best
What do you like best about the product?
I started using chef products over the last 8 years, and I became an expert in chef software running kitchens, chef knife cli, compliance, inspect, easy to integrate API's with other applications, pipeline, ruby language easy to use and get familiar quickly using chef error handling messages. Chef configuration management and deployment application.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing at this point and no comments about any dislike of the product.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Cost reduction is a must to keep clients using the product.
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