Chef
Achieve speed, scale, and consistency by automating your infrastructure with Chef
Whether you have five or five thousand servers, Chef lets you manage them all by turning infrastructure into code. Infrastructure described as code is flexible, versionable, human-readable, and testable. Whether your infrastructure is in the cloud, on-premises or in a hybrid environment, you can easily and quickly adapt to your business’s changing needs with Chef.
Try Free Chef Tutorials 
View Technical Resources The Components of Chef and How It Works
Chef Development Kit
The Chef DK gives you the tools you need to develop and test your infrastructure automation code locally from your workstation, before deploying changes into production. For example, the Test Kitchen tool lets you run tests in an isolated environment. Chef DK also includes InSpec, a powerful language for writing infrastructure tests. Download Chef DK
Chef Server
The Chef Server acts as a central repository for cookbooks as well as for information about every node it manages. Chef cookbooks contain code that describes the desired state of your infrastructure. Download Server
Chef Client
A node is any physical or virtual machine in your network that is managed by the Chef server. The Chef client runs on each node and securely communicates with the Chef server to get the latest configuration instructions. The Chef client uses the instructions to bring the node to its desired state. Download Client
Benefits of Chef
ACCELERATE CLOUD ADOPTION
As you move your applications to the cloud, Chef makes your adoption path not just smooth, but fast. Migrate your workloads quickly, consistently, and at a pace that suits your needs.
MANAGE BOTH DATA CENTER AND CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS
Chef lets you manage all your environments. Manage Windows, Linux, AIX, and Solaris servers, whether in the cloud or on premises.
MANAGE MULTIPLE CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS
Take control of all your cloud environments. Chef is cloud agnostic, which means you’re free to pick the cloud providers that meet your requirements, based on features and cost.
MAINTAIN HIGH AVAILABILITY
Keep the Chef Server API available even in case of partial network or hardware failure. The Chef server can operate in a high availability configuration that provides automated load balancing and failover for stateful components in the system architecture.
CHEF AUTOMATE
DO MORE WITH CHEF
Chef Automate provides enterprise capabilities that let you do even more with Chef. Chef Automate includes a continuous deployment pipeline for infrastructure and applications, automated testing for compliance and security, as well as dashboards and reports for troubleshooting, auditing and management. Make better, faster deployment decisions by putting reliable and timely information at the fingertips of decision makers. Achieve safety and velocity with Chef Automate.
Chef provided an automation solution flexible enough to bend to our scale dynamics without requiring us to change our workflow.
Phil Dibowitz, Production Engineer, Facebook Read Chef Customer Stories