At the ChefConf 2018, Chef released new version of its automation platform— Chef Automate 2.0. The leading continuous automation provider also launched Chef Workstation and announced updates to Chef Habitat and Chef InSpec.
- Chef Automate 2.0
The new version of Chef Automate combines the infrastructure and applications work, so that enterprises can securely build, deploy and manage applications in all environments. It will help the enterprises in meeting the post-digital transformation demands.
Automate will now have several new features and tools for better operational visibility and debugging, allowing the users to analyze infrastructure and compliance automation data from a single control panel.
Chef Automate has now been integrated with the cloud compliance capabilities of InSpec 2, to improve the compliance scanning. It can be used in evaluating the cloud configurations through APIs. Chef Automate 2 comes with scanning support for Cisco IOS equipment, extending modern compliance capabilities to network devices.
Chef has rearchitected the Automate to incorporate Go-based microservices, which will enable faster and flexible support for web UI atop a REST API. It can now support tens of thousands of nodes from a single installation.
- Chef Workstation
Chef Workstation is aimed at founding a better workstation experience for DevOps teams. It includes all the tools that are available with ChefDK.
Chef Workstation will allow DevOps teams to complete their tasks using the existing capabilities of Chef, and then seamlessly scale those tasks through Chef Automate.
The DevOps teams will now be able to execute the Chef recipes and cookbooks remotely using the laptops or desktops. Chef said that the Workstation will provide an improved user experience and cohesion between tools to enable seamless experience for the infrastructure automation tasks.
- Chef Habitat new features
Chef Habitat is an application automation platform that allows users to build, deploy and manage the applications on bare metal, virtual machines, containers and PaaS (platform as a service).
With the updated Chef Habitat, the users be able to run the Habitat behind the firewall. Habitat now supports a broad range of application types including an updated Kubernetes Operator. It has been integrated with Azure Container Service, Helm Chart exporter, Open Service Broker and Splunk.
These updates are aimed at modernizing the application delivery, and improving operational analytics.
- Chef InSpec new features
Chef InSpec is a platform to automate the validation of compliance and security on traditional servers, containers, and cloud APIs. Chef launched the InSpec 2.0 in February this year.
The new features in InSpec include cloud configuration compliance, support for more resources including Cisco IOS network devices, and improved performance.
Users will be able to verify policies for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud. Chef claimed that InSpec will offer up to 90% improved performance on Windows and up to 30% on Linux and Unix.
“Enterprise software development and delivery is so often gated by the operational concerns of infrastructure – from desktops to servers, storage and networks – applications end up as a second-class citizen,” said Corey Scobie, SVP of Product and Engineering at Chef. “This is insufficient to thrive in a world where the primary interface to customers, and therefore revenue, is the application. The targeted solutions we introduced today enable executives and their organizations to make that critical shift quickly and easily.”
