[chef] Re: System configuration tool comparison

[Joshua Timberman < >]

Hi Bart!

Thank you for including Chef in your comparison!

As Chef is an actively developed project, the version you reviewed, 0.8.8, is 
at this point 5 months old. We have had a 'major' release (0.9.0) in that 
time and several point releases (current is 0.9.8). New features for 
consideration in your evaluation:

* Windows is now a supported platform (as of 0.8.14), and gets better with 
each release.
* The Opscode Platform (our commercial product offering) supports strong 
role-based access control (as of 0.9.0). This is API based rather than 
system-user based.

Also a couple clarifications on specific points on the list:

* User interface, the web interface is mainly used for management of 
components. Reporting is a feature we may develop more in the future.
* Deployment architecture, when used client/server that is true (centralized, 
pull), though Chef can also be used in a standalone mode called Chef Solo.
* Monitoring the infrastructure can be done a variety of ways (status from 
knife or the webui, exception/reporting handlers, querying the server 
data/search indexes). Also, Opscode provides a few cookbooks for configuring 
monitoring tools (notably nagios and munin).
* Versioning support is in early phases for cookbooks uploaded to a Chef 
Server, and will be fully developed in an upcoming release.
* Available documentation should also include that Opscode provides open 
training materials that are under a creative commons license.

Feel free to ask if you have any further questions.


On Aug 13, 2010, at 2:56 AM, Bart Vanbrabant wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Since there are a lot of system configuration tools (both commercial 
> and open-source), it is difficult to know what tool if right for you. 
> Therefore, we developed a framework that you can use to compare system 
> configuration tools. This framework, together with a set of 11 tools 
> that are evaluated using this framework will be published in a paper 
> and presented at the LISA'10 conference (http://www.usenix.org/events/ ;
> lisa10).
> 
> Since Chef is a well known tool within the system administration 
> community, we included it in our comparison. We also set up a website 
> that accompanies the paper. On this website, you will find the full 
> evaluation of Chef at http://sysconfigtools.cer-wiki.info/tool/chef
> My question to you: if you want to help us making this website and our 
> paper better, please review Chef (or other tools you are familiar 
> with) and provide us with comments, either by email or using the 
> comment-facility on the website. 
> 
> The website URL is temporary, we are going to migrate this website a 
> 'official' university URL. You will see that for each tool, there 
> exist a large number of properties that are evaluated. Clicking on 
> these properties gives you an overlay with more information about that 
> property. 
> 
> Note that the deadline for the paper submission is the 24th of august. 
> Comments that might trigger chances in the paper should be received 
> before that date. We are going to maintain this website, so comments 
> are also welcome after the 24th of august. 
> 
> Thank you very much in advance 
> 
> Kind Regards 
> 
> --
> Bart Vanbrabant 
> Doctoral Researcher 
> DistriNet, dept. Computer Science, K.U.Leuven Belgium 
> 
> Thomas Delaet 
> Post-doctoral Researcher 
> DistriNet, dept. Computer Science, K.U.Leuven Belgium
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm

-- 
Opscode, Inc
Joshua Timberman, Technical Evangelist
C: 720.334.RUBY E: