Chef: "IT automation for speed and awesomeness"
Chef is a configuration management tool for dealing with machine setup on physical servers, virtual machines and in the cloud. Many companies use Chef software to control and manage their infrastructure including Facebook, Etsy, Cheezburger, and Indiegogo.
But what does that really mean?
Chef is an automation tool that provides a way to define infrastructure as code. Infrastructure as code (IAC) simply means that managing infrastructure by writing code (Automating infrastructure) rather than using manual processes. It can also be termed as programmable infrastructure. Chef uses a pure-Ruby, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing system configurations. Below are the types of automation done by Chef, irrespective of the size of infrastructure:
- Infrastructure configuration
- Application deployment
- Configurations are managed across your network