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Progress Chef Reviews & Product Details

The Progress Chef portfolio consists of multiple, integrated products. It offers a set of capabilities that provide organizations the flexibility to support different use cases. All these capabilities are based on a trusted set of tools rooted in open source, starting with the ability to configure, deploy and manage all aspects of a technology stack as well as the ability to secure and support compliance across the asset fleet. The Chef portfolio includes configuration/infrastructure management, application delivery (including edge support and device management as well as support for security and compliance), all of which are supported by a single pane of glass for fleet wide visibility and control.

Product Website

Seller

Progress Software

Discussions

Progress Chef Community

Overview by

Jennifer Meyer (Customer Advocacy Manager)

Value at a Glance

Averages based on real user reviews.

Time to Implement

3 months

View More Pricing Information

Progress Chef Media

Node Status Report with option for Profile Status readout

Progress Chef Demo - Chef Infrastructure

Chef Infra Client Run Status displaying passed and failed nodes

Profile shows the definition, metadata, and resources to scan

Effortlessly manage your DevOps work in the cloud.

Continuously monitor and validate users and devices for privileges and attributes with Chef.

Official Downloads

(5)

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Progress Chef Reviews (105)

Reviews

Progress Chef Reviews (105)

Review Summary

Generated using AI from real user reviews

Users consistently praise the product for its ease of use and automation capabilities, which streamline configuration management across various environments. Many appreciate how it allows for efficient management of infrastructure as code, enabling teams to deploy applications quickly and reliably. However, some users note that the initial setup can be complex, requiring a steep learning curve.

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Michael M.

Cloud Specialist

Information Technology and Services

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5/21/2016

"Powerful tool but difficult to get started with"

2.5/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

Simplifies bootstrapping fleets of servers and managing required packages. Allows developers to build upon a library of packages from other developers so they don't need to start at the basics from scratch and can more quickly and easily start on the parts that really matter Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

Very difficult and time consuming to set up and get started with; large learning curve; compatibility issues with little to no documentation Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

Consider as a possible solution for your DevOps build but also consider other tools like Ansible. You may very quickly become dependent on Chef once you implement it so make sure you like it and it meets your needs first. Team members with previous experience will be a huge plus to overcome the initial learning curve and setup time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

Automating deployments, versioning deployment code, granular user permissions, scalable and highly available infrastructure and applications Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Liam B.

Mobile Developer

Internet

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

2/8/2016

"Chef is an excellent tool for Server Configuration"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

I have been using Chef as it helps me to automate my applications in configuring and getting deployed in my web network easily.

It has got various features such as Chef Management console, Chef Analytics, and Client Reporting. It helps me to keep my server up all the time and saves up a lot of time in this area.

It also allows me to keep the track of my applications in terms of version control. So, the applications remains in synchronization with the help of different versions available for each built. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

The setup document and tutorials could have been a little better. They have provided all the documentation in a single web page with no references to any external links. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

I would recommend you to choose between the free version and the paid version of Chef as per your needs and requirements. Getting an initial demo from the team would be a good idea. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

We are using it for the automation for our server configuration which saves a lot of time and energy required for manual configuration each time the server gets down. I like the Chef Development Kit where all the command line tools are available for help if you are stuck somewhere. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Todd P.

Cloud Architect

Information Technology and Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

3/31/2016

"Chef is Awesome!"

5/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

The shear amount that you can do with the product from Linux to Windows, configurations to application deployments, Chef is delightfully AWESOME!!!!! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

I personally don't have any dislikes for Chef as a product. The only caveat is when creating resources, you'll need to increase your Ruby knowledge and skills. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

To learn Chef, I highly recommend using the http://learn.chef.io . Even for an OPs guy, Chef is awesome! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

When I jumped on the infrastructure as code bandwagon, I was testing both Chef and Puppet to Linux and Windows deployments. I chose Chef as they fixed a pending reboot issue with RDSH first. As a Solution/managed Service provider, the ability to reduce deployment time with a standard automated deployment methodology is invaluable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Mario C.

Army Of One

Computer Software

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4/13/2016

"Automating deployment with Chef"

0/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

Chef is a standard in automated deployment. Is used in Facebook and it's really REALLY powerful. It's a very serious thing about deployment automation and it's capabilities are huge. Maintains states (software, configuration...) of the entire cluster, and I'm talking about hundreds of nodes. Cookbooks are very popular and you can find them to do almost everything in the open source community. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

Chef is terribly complex to deploy by itself, not only needs a Chef Server that internally will install a RabbitMQ, a SQL database, a Nginx... it can really take a lot of resources of your machine.

Not only this, you need to install a daemon, Chef Client, on each Chef node you want to manage. Of course if this Client fails... your node is "lost" for Chef and you cannot manage it anymore until you restart the client. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

If you really, really need to manage a big set of nodes to do very complex things, you can give Chef a try (you also have Puppet). But if need something relatively simple I don't think is worth the effort. As I mention before, Chef is quite complex if you want to do simple things (maybe Ansible fits better in this case) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

We were automating the installation of 8 to 10 linux packages over a set of 4 to 20 machines. We were using a "root" machine to start the installation and, using a web ui, let a user select a set of technologies to install them on the rest of the nodes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

M. Serhat D.

Senior Software Developer

Information Technology and Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

1/14/2016

"Made for DevOps and Easy Deployment"

5/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

Chef is one of my favorite tools lately. It makes painful and risky deployments easy and fast. Chef is also providing a quite flexible infrastructure which lets you to manage many nodes easily. You can simply integrate your other DevOps practices with Chef. It helps you to understand your infrastructure better and minifies security risks before your service goes down. Definetely Chef is a great tool to minimize your downtime. I'm a Ruby developer and Chef has a good support for both Ruby and Rails environments. Also Chef recipes written with Ruby, which is time saving for me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

Hosted and premium versions are more expensive than I can afford. Also management console, analytics and high availability features are not included in free version. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

Before going with Chef, I suggest you to read well written documentation first and then check cookbooks for ready-to-use solutions before writing your own. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

Chef makes our deployments easy and efficient. In the past deployments were stressful and time-consuming for us and Chef helped us to deal with deployments. Also check and read about Puppet, Ansible, Capristano and other DevOps tools which you can use together with Chef. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nagarjuna Y.

Software Development Engineer

Online Media

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

1/7/2016

"Devops made easy"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

Awesome documentation & training resources given by the Chef are easily understandable.I have used only the opensource and free versions of chef-solo (except for the trail period) in all the organisations I have worked with till now.I use chef in conjunction with vagrant to improve & automate the stuff in development life cycle.Librarian-chef is most useful bundler plugin for chef based infrastructure which one must try automates the things with simple commands.

Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

They divided the Chef tool into three categories for the sake of business which is very disappointing

1. Hosted Chef

2. Enterprise (On-Premise Version)

3. Opensource Version which comes with less add-on and no support

Though there is a vast community present who are using chef for businesses it tuff to rely on opensource chef unless we have very experienced professionals.Pricing disappoints me a lot being a small organisation.Chef commitment to opensource is still doubtful which is an scary thing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

Do you wanna save the amount of time managing server configuration for your systems? Then yes I would recommend Chef for you.For small organisation hire a experienced professional to save money that need to be spend on tech support while using chef otherwise train them to get expertise so that they can confidently manage your infrastructure.

Choosing Hosted chef is best option for the organization with newly trained staff which would save organisation from critical situations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

Cloud Deployment, Build Automation, Server configuration Management Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Stewart H.

Principle Engineer

Financial Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

6/3/2016

"A workhorse for deployment and configuration"

4/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

The ability to manage multiple environments easily. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

The domain specific language has a couple of small quirks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

https://docs.chef.io/ is your friend! The domain specific language (DSL) can be very hard at times especially for those coming from a non-Ruby programming back-ground. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

We used this to manage all of the hosts configurations and applications that we deployed. It was used for all aspects to manage log locations, configurations, and even some kernel level configurations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ashutosh N.

Technical Lead

Information Technology and Services

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

12/23/2015

"Chef is neat and awesome"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

Open Source

Community support.

Documentation is great.

Well written Chef blogs to understand steps and procedure.

Automated deployment of application in a farm.

Availability of well written cookbooks.

Ease of development with just enough knowledge of Ruby. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

Installation should be made little faster.

knife-plugins support is less

Some of the cookbooks are not maintained.. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

I recommend to use Chef because of following reasons :

Community support is amazing. You have developers/users in the list who help to solve your problems. You need not be proficient in Ruby, just know-how of Ruby is enough to start developing recipes. Most of the cookbooks available on Chef's git-hub page can be re-used and customized as per your requirement. It also supports majority of Operating Systems. I have worked with other configuration management and remote execution systems, but it all depends what your need is and which one fits your environment. Rather than wading through so many tutorials, decide on one and be on it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

We wanted to do one-click installation of application on cloud.

Did a setup right from bare-metal provisioning and then used Chef for application deployment on Private Cloud. Developed shell scripts which triggers chef-client once a machine is ready on blade server. Used knife-plugins to manage private cloud farm.

Some of the benefits realized were ease of testing cookbooks using test-kitchen and Vagrant. Chef-solo was also helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Rodrigo R.

Desenvolvedor

Information Technology and Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

12/22/2015

"Excelent server automation tool"

5/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

There are plenty of well written, documented and supported Chef recipes for dealing with all sorts of server automation, like users management, database management, Solr configuration, full application stack configuration (Sensu, Gitorious, Redmine), SSH, and many more commonly used software. All of them are open-source and have plenty of customization options. Chef itself has good documentation.

Dependencies management is very easy and robust by using librarian-chef.

Chef's verbose mode is very helpful when debugging what a recipe is doing and there's also a dry runner mode which won't actually run anything in the server, which is also helpful in some cases.

Unlike Puppet there's no domain specific language to learn, which is a big advantage for me. You only have to learn a bit of Ruby, which is an easy language to learn and use and you are able to perform any logic pretty easily when compared with Puppet which is quite limiting when you need some custom logic which is not handled by their DSL and you are forced to extend their DSL.

Chef can be configured through an specialized server that will orchestrate all managed servers or they can be used without setting up any Chef server, through chef-solo. Chef-solo can be integrated with Vagrant as well to help setting up a development environment very quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

I'd prefer Chef's focused on chef-solo for most of its beginning tutorials as I find it the easier mode to start with and also the most useful one for most small organizations. The fact that chef-solo is not the tutorials assume makes it harder for a beginner to understand how it works.

I also think they could be more backwards compatible in new releases. I remember it took me quite a while to fix some old recipes I had so that it would work in newer Chef releases...

They use JIRA to manage their tickets and I really don't like JIRA. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

I'd recommend starting with the chef-solo mode, which is much easier to start with and well suitable even for more complex servers infra-structure. Also, take some time to learn some Ruby if you are not comfortable with the language. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

We integrate Chef and Capistrano to manage our servers and deploy our applications. Since both are written in Ruby, we can share a dynamic configuration written as a Ruby DSL that is used by both Chef recipes and Capistrano tasks. We use Capistrano to run Chef in the servers requiring changes.

For example, we manage multiple environments and applications in a shared set of servers. We have a database server and two application servers and we are able to properly manage the database in the database server through Chef, configure Solr, install packages in the application servers, set up nginx in the right server and everything that is required for the application to run and finally run the deploy procedure using Capistrano tasks, which are more well suited to handle deploys and rollbacks than Chef is. The server management part is handled by Capistrano running chef-solo in the right servers. Then the deploy proceeds as usual with regular Capistrano tasks. All with a single command line that will inform the application, which application server to deploy to and the environment (production, Cert, experimental, staging and others).

Being able to run a single command to handle the full deployment cycle gives a lot confidence specially because there are lots of steps involved for our applications to be properly configured and run in our servers... It would be really easy to forget some of those steps in a big release without the automated recipes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Information Technology and Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

12/21/2015

"Vagrant User"

4/5

What do you like best about Progress Chef?

I won't state how much I like chef due to its automation, but I'd like to say that in comparison with puppet and ansible, it gives better control as it allows you to "develop" your system. The dependencies system that's out of the box due to Ruby is really good! As a vagrant only user, chef-zero was the product that I really needed! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Progress Chef?

- I have to write ruby

- As a vagrant user, it feels it has quite some overhead when the system bootstraps

- It takes more time to write something "quick and dirty", while ansible performs better for MVP cases

- As a vagrant user, it feels ugly the way I have to manage my secret files, databags are not the best case Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Progress Chef:

Make it being easier to bootstrap new projects - MVPs, maybe use some template bucket? Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Progress Chef solving and how is that benefiting you?

As a team leader, I've manage to create a unified environment for my team members, and having it on git, we are having the opportunity to all extended based on our ongoing needs. Using chef like that, It also gives me the opportunity to have a "shared communication protocol" with the devops side, and not missing any details that have been developed throughout the development phase.

As a business perspective, it has make the dev environment "disposable", as everything that's needed run in the Dev's VM and their laptops have no value now, or worrying if they got stolen Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.