Chef, a leader in DevSecOps, today announced availability of
Chef Infra 16, adding a number of new features -- including YAML support,
Unified Mode, cookbook upgrade automation and expanded platform support. These
new capabilities enhance performance for all users and significantly reduce the
time and knowledge required to begin using Chef Infra. The company also
announced end-of-support for pre-Chef 15 versions of Chef Infra, ensuring that
customers will have the latest capabilities in addition to the highest levels of
support.
Chef Infra allows
DevOps and Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) teams to define
infrastructure as code, ensuring that configuration policy is flexible,
versionable, testable and human-readable. It enables repeatable processes to
eliminate drift and provides customizable code for extreme flexibility using
simple, declarative definitions for common administrative tasks. It ensures
painless migration and management with a single process to manage on-premises and
cloud estates.
"As DevOps needs and capabilities continue to scale in global
enterprises, more teams and more widely varied types of users are introduced to
automation platforms," said Jim Mercer, research director, DevOps, IDC. "Chef
Infra 16 offers users at both ends of the spectrum - new entrants and
experienced engineers - new capabilities to keep their organizations and their
cloud environments running smoothly."
New
features in Chef Infra 16 include:
- YAML support -- Recipes written
in YAML enable quick and easy execution, streamlining new user onboarding
and easing use for those introduced to Chef via InSpec. A new YAML-to-Ruby
converter eases use of helpers, node attributes, looping and other
functions.
- Unified Mode -- Significantly improves organizational productivity
by enabling IT staff without Ruby coding experience to author cookbooks.Streamlined
execution of customized policy makes it easier to extend Chef Infra to
address complex problems.
- Cookbook upgrade automation --
Improvements to the Cookstyle utility combine cookbook analysis with
auto-correction capabilities to make upgrading legacy cookbooks easier
than ever.
- Expanded platform support -- Chef
Infra 16 provides ARM (AArch64) support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
Amazon Linux 2, CentOS, Ubuntu and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
- Reduced size and increased
speed -- Chef Infra 16 consumes up to 33 percent less disk space and
improves Windows performance with knife by up to 450 percent.
Today's
announcement also marks a critical milestone for Chef and its customers as the
company crosses the one-year mark since its shift to 100 percent open source.
End-of-support for pre-Chef 15 versions of Chef software helps ensure that it
is able to prioritize and quickly meet the needs of its commercial customers,
who are accelerating adoption of the entire Enterprise Automation Stack to
accelerate their own cloud usage and business growth.
"The new
capabilities of Chef 16, in addition to Chef's shift to 100 percent open source
last year and the new licensing terms applied to its stack have generated
strong new upgrade opportunities for us and have enabled us to develop more
strategic relationships with our customers," said Pradeep Nair, head of DevOps
consulting at Relevance Labs. "We look forward to working closely with Chef to
ensure that our mutual customers' most pressing business needs continue to be
met quickly and efficiently."
"Chef 16 is the most powerful version of our Infra Client to date, with
strong new capabilities for both new and experienced Chef users," said John
Wyss, VP of product at Chef. "With Chef Infra Client 16, organizations never
have to choose between ease-of-use and versatility. It provides tools tailored
for any maturity level or use case, from no-code YAML-based recipes for simple
tasks, to fully customized and codified organization-specific policies."