About Chef Workstation

Start your infrastructure automation with Chef Workstation. Chef Workstation gives you everything you need to get started with Chef - ad hoc remote execution, remote scanning, configuration tasks, cookbook creation tools as well as robust dependency and testing software - all in one easy-to-install package.

Chef Workstation includes:

Chef Infra Client
Chef InSpec
Chef Habitat
chef and knife command line tools
Testing tools such as Test Kitchen and Cookstyle
Everything else needed to author cookbooks and upload them to Chef Infra Server

Get started

Chef Infra is a systems and cloud infrastructure automation framework that makes it easy to deploy servers and applications to any physical, virtual, or cloud location, no matter the size of the infrastructure. Each organization is comprised of one (or more) Chef Workstation installations, a single server, and every node that will be configured and maintained by Chef Infra Client. Cookbooks (and recipes) are used to tell Chef Infra Client how each node in your organization should be configured. Chef Infra Client—which is installed on every node—does the actual configuration.

Cookbook development workflow

Chef Infra defines a common workflow for cookbook development:

Create a skeleton cookbook by running chef generate cookbook MY_COOKBOOK_NAME. This generates a cookbook with a single recipe and testing configuration for Test Kitchen with Chef InSpec.
Write cookbook recipes or resources and lint and debug them with Cookstyle and Test Kitchen. Making your own cookbooks is an iterative process where you develop, test, find and fix bugs, and then develop and test some more. A text editor—Visual Studio Code, Atom, vim, or any other preferred text editor—is the only tool that you need to author your cookbooks.
Test in acceptance. Test your work in an environment that matches your production environment.
Deploy your cookbooks to the production environment, but only after they pass all the acceptance tests and are verified to work in the desired manner.

Included tools and components

Chef Workstation includes the following fully integrated tools:

Core development tools

Chef CLI (chef-cli): Primary command-line interface for Chef development workflows, providing unified access to common Chef operations
Chef Infra Client: Latest release candidate of the Chef Infra Client, enabling infrastructure automation and configuration management
Knife: Essential tool for interacting with Chef Infra Server, managing nodes, cookbooks, roles, and other Chef objects
Chef InSpec: Latest release candidate of InSpec, enabling compliance and security testing.

Testing and quality assurance

Chef Test Kitchen Enterprise: Comprehensive testing framework for validating infrastructure code across multiple platforms and environments
Chef InSpec: Compliance and security testing framework for auditing infrastructure and applications against security standards and regulations
Cookstyle: Ruby and Chef cookbook linting tool that enforces style guidelines and best practices
Fauxhai: Mock Ohai data generator for testing purposes, enabling rapid cookbook testing without requiring actual systems

Dependency and secret management

Berkshelf: Cookbook dependency manager that streamlines the process of managing and retrieving cookbook dependencies
Chef Vault: Secure data management tool for encrypting and managing secrets within Chef workflows
Ohai: System profiling tool that detects and reports system attributes for use in Chef recipes