The End of an Era: Chef Infra Server Transitions to Chef 360 Platform

Why Is Chef Infra Server (Open Source) Being Phased Out?

When Chef Infra Server was first released in 2009, infrastructure was largely static — physical servers, long-lived VMs and manual provisioning. The world has now changed.

Organizations now run dynamic, distributed environments across multiple clouds and edge locations. Security, compliance and automation expectations have grown exponentially. Maintaining a standalone open-source Infra Server no longer provides the velocity, security posture or integration flexibility required by modern DevSecOps teams.

To meet those needs, Chef has evolved from merely a configuration tool into Progress Chef 360 — a powerful, cloud-ready, unified platform that brings together Infrastructure, Compliance, Policy as Code and Orchestration into a single, secure experience. 

What Does This Mean for the Open-Source Community?

To clarify, this change doesn’t signal a shift away from open source at Chef.

We remain deeply grateful to the thousands of practitioners, contributors and maintainers who helped build Chef Infra Server. Your work established the foundation that Chef 360 stands on today.

Projects such as Chef Infra Client, InSpec, Workstation and our broader ecosystem of open-source tooling will continue to be actively maintained and developed. The open-source DNA of Chef remains central to who we are and it’s how innovation starts, how the community experiments and how we collectively raise the bar for automation.

The decision to retire the open-source Infra Server reflects the unique challenges of maintaining a complex, centralized service that requires deep integration, hardened security and cloud-native scalability. These are best delivered through the Chef 360 platform, where we can maintain continuous improvement, better visibility and enterprise-grade reliability.

What’s Changing?

Here’s what’s changing:

• End of Updates: No new Chef code, features or security fixes, will be contributed into the open-source version of Infra Server after the end of October 2026.
• Community Repositories: Existing repositories will remain accessible in read-only form for reference and historical purposes.
• Migration Options:
• Chef 360 SaaS — This is the easiest way to get started for open-source users. Users can transition to Chef SaaS with minimal effort, as it offers a fully managed, cloud-based solution. It minimizes the complexity of infrastructure setup, performs automatic upgrades and provides built-in security.
• Chef 360 Self-Managed — This is for teams that prefer to host and operate Chef within their own environment. Chef 360 Self-Managed offers a familiar foundation with modern enhancements, while retaining complete control over their infrastructure.

Both options preserve Infra Server functionality while adding unified visibility, compliance, secrets management, orchestration, node management and seamless upgrades.

We will provide commercial migration guides, tooling and support to maintain a smooth and predictable transition.

What Does This Mean for Your Business?

If your organization still relies on an open-source Infra Server, continued use beyond its end-of-life date carries risk:

• Security risk — You will no longer receive CVE patches or security updates, which could leave your infrastructure vulnerable.
• Compliance risk — Unmaintained and outdated components can lead to audit failures based on standards-based requirements.
• Operational risk — Dependency drift and compatibility issues will compound over time, increasing operational risk.

Chef 360 mitigates these challenges with:

1. Continuous updates and proactive vulnerability management.
2. Centralized policy enforcement and compliance dashboards.
3. Unified automation workflows across on-premises and cloud environments.
4. Dedicated commercial support and an active community ecosystem.
   

Join Us for the Next Chapter

The retirement of Chef Infra Server isn’t an ending — it’s a transformation. A transformation that meets the demands of modern and growing enterprises. The spirit of automation, openness and collaboration that built Chef Infra lives on in the Chef 360 platform, now equipped for the scale and complexity of modern infrastructure.

So, from the Chef team, THANK YOU for being part of this incredible journey. Together, we’ve shaped how the world automates its IT infrastructure. Now, let’s shape what comes next — faster, smarter and more secure — with the Chef 360 platform.