Chef Consulting

Chef is an infrastructure automation platform used by DevOps and platform engineering teams to manage operating system and application configuration as code. It helps standardize how packages, users, services, and security settings are applied across development, staging, and production, reducing manual changes and configuration drift in large Linux and Windows fleets.

Teams typically build reusable cookbooks and policy definitions, validate changes in test environments, and promote updates through controlled rollouts and CI/CD pipelines. Chef is often paired with provisioning tools such as Terraform to separate infrastructure creation from ongoing configuration management.

• Idempotent configuration enforcement via cookbooks, recipes, and resources
• Policy-based environment control using roles/environments or Policyfiles
• Automated node bootstrapping and continuous convergence to desired state
• Support for hybrid estates across on-premises data centers and cloud platforms
• Patterns for auditing and compliance through standardized configuration

With the rise of Infrastructure-as-Code tools for provisioning infrastructure (such as Terraform), and Orchestration tools for running containers (such as Kubernetes), the need for Configuration Management decreased as it was used mostly to configure Operating Systems and provision resources.

However, there are still use-cases where companies manage the servers' Operating System directly, and they do so using Configuration Management tools.

A number of examples where managing the servers directly is required:

1. Bare-Metal or On-Premise servers
   Can't provision infrastructure using Infrastructure-as-Code tools (such as Terraform), and can't use fully-managed services for orchestration such as Kubernetes.
   In such cases Configuration Management tools will be used to manage groups of servers, install the applications' dependencies & configuration, and perhaps even install an orchestration tool such as Kubernetes.
2. Specific system requirements
   A given company might choose not to use an orchestration tool as a result of specific system requirements.
   An example would be a company that provides an SDK that communicates with the company's servers, and is implemented in clients' apps and systems, with a requirement by the clients that the SDK takes less than 5ms to respond.
   In that case the networking toll orchestration systems like Kubernetes have on every request will be unacceptable, and so that company will be forced to optimize for a very simple network topology with minimal "hops" between different parts of the system.

There is also the case where companies started with Configuration Management as their main way of building a platform for the developers, and the coupling to the Configuration Management tool became too complicated to be worth "untangling" in the short-term or even mid-term.

Chef is an infrastructure automation platform for managing operating system and application configuration as code, helping teams keep server fleets consistent across data centers and cloud environments.

• Defines desired system state with an idempotent resource model, reducing configuration drift from manual changes.
• Standardizes baselines through reusable cookbooks and Policyfiles, improving repeatability across dev, staging, and production.
• Scales configuration management for large node fleets using Chef Infra Server for policy distribution, node inventory, and reporting.
• Supports heterogeneous estates, including Linux and Windows, which is common in enterprise environments.
• Encourages safe change workflows with local testing using Test Kitchen before rolling updates to production.
• Improves compliance and auditability with Chef InSpec profiles and version-controlled infrastructure code.
• Enables controlled rollouts via policy versioning and environment targeting, reducing risk during configuration changes.
• Extends cleanly with custom resources and a Ruby-based DSL to package internal standards and platform patterns.
• Integrates with CI/CD pipelines to automate cookbook linting, testing, promotion, and deployment.

Chef is typically a strong fit for long-lived servers and OS-level configuration that must be continuously enforced at scale. It introduces operational overhead compared to agentless approaches, so teams usually benefit from standard cookbook patterns, testing discipline, and clear promotion workflows.

Common alternatives include Puppet, Salt, and Ansible, with Terraform often used alongside Chef for provisioning rather than ongoing configuration management. For product details, see Chef Infra.

Our experience with Chef helped us turn infrastructure configuration into a repeatable, testable delivery practice—building reusable patterns, safer promotion workflows, and operational guardrails that make environments more consistent and easier to support.

Some of the things we did include:

• Assessed existing Chef estates (cookbooks, roles/environments, Policyfiles, nodes) and delivered prioritized remediation plans to reduce drift and simplify ongoing maintenance.
• Refactored legacy cookbooks into clearer, modular components with consistent attribute structures, idempotent resources, and documented run lists for predictable outcomes.
• Implemented Policyfile-based workflows to version and promote configuration changes from dev to prod with repeatable builds and clearer rollback paths.
• Integrated Chef testing into CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins to run lint/unit/integration checks before rollout and catch breaking changes early.
• Standardized bootstrap and node enrollment for hybrid estates across on-prem and cloud, including environment-specific configuration and secure client key handling.
• Paired Chef with Terraform to separate provisioning from configuration management, improving auditability and reducing deployment coupling.
• Built host baselines for Kubernetes nodes (kernel parameters, networking, container runtime dependencies, and system services) to improve cluster stability.
• Hardened OS and service configurations with least-privilege access, secret handling practices, and change controls aligned to compliance and audit requirements.
• Connected Chef-managed hosts to observability stacks by standardizing logging/metrics agent configuration and ensuring consistent tagging across environments.
• Supported day-2 operations by improving run performance, reducing convergence time, and introducing safe rollout strategies (canaries/batches) for large node fleets.

This experience helped us accumulate significant knowledge across Chef migrations, day-2 operations, compliance-driven configuration, CI/CD enablement, and scalable rollout strategies—so we can deliver high-quality Chef setups that are maintainable, testable, and consistent for clients.

Some of the things we can help you do with Chef include:

• Assess your current configuration management approach and deliver a gap analysis report covering consistency, risk, and operational maturity.
• Create an adoption roadmap for Chef, including target architecture, environment strategy, and a phased rollout plan across teams.
• Design and implement Chef cookbooks, roles/environments, and policy patterns to standardize OS and application configuration as code.
• Build automated testing and promotion workflows for cookbooks (lint/unit/integration) and integrate with CI/CD for safer releases.
• Harden configurations with security baselines, least-privilege access, secrets handling, and compliance guardrails to reduce drift and audit risk.
• Optimize performance and cost by right-sizing configuration runs, reducing convergence time, and improving node lifecycle management.
• Troubleshoot Chef Infra issues (run failures, dependency conflicts, cookbook drift) and stabilize pipelines and environments.
• Establish operational practices—monitoring, alerting, and run reporting—aligned with your observability standards for reliable day-2 operations.
• Enable your teams with hands-on training, coding standards, and reference patterns so Chef becomes a repeatable delivery capability.

Learn more about our broader DevOps consulting services and how we help teams operationalize configuration as code.