Chef queries

DevOps Chef
#1

Hello Chef/Community Team Members

I have some query related with chef-infra components and like to get some feedback/response on it. If you can answer here or at DM or lead me to any contact for fast response would be very helpful.

  1. which components from the chef-infra that is chef-client, chef-workstation, chef-inspec, chef-server and chef-automate is open-source and free for use?
  2. with binaries available at https://downloads.chef.io/ for client, workstation and server can we manage 500 nodes without automate (no dashboard required). And if not how many nodes can be managed using this 3 components
  3. which component require the license for use apart from automate?
  4. what is cost of license (approx)
#2
  1. All official binaries require license, you can check Cinc.sh or see us in for a community buold with trademarks removed
#3
  1. Yes, the number of nodes is roughly unrelated until 10k nodes where you may need to tweak the chef-server a bit
#4
  1. All components, and 4) contact à sales representative, there’s no public pricing anymore
#5

Hi thanks alot for the response. in point number 2 i would to understand more. say that, if i simply download the binary and setup the chef environment, hence, with server-client-workstation and no license applied will i be able to manage 500node? as somewhere in past i read that only first 25node is free to be manage in chef-server

#6

That limitation was for chef-manage back in a time when client/workstation/server were free for use unlimited

#7

ok so with chef-server (without manage), workstation and client without applying the license i can manage 500node then

#8

I.e: latest 14 client (14.5.19 I think) , latest 12 server (can’t remember exactly) and latest 0 workstation (0.3.2 IIRC)

#9

No, with latest versions (17, 14 and can’t remember) you need a license as soon as you have production nodes (not test/discovery)

#10

For a recent version, free of license, see cinc, client is done, workstation has still some wordmark but is usable, server is ongoing but should be released soon

#11

are we able to build chef-infra-* from source and use internally (no distribution of created binaries outside of company walls) without a license agreement?

#12

Yes and No, from Chef guidance: internal builds are considered as a distribution and must comply with the trademark policy, I.E none of Chef trademarks should display when using them. Again, that’s what we’re doing with Cinc in

#13

yep been playing with cinc (thanks for the work), was cautious to not use the cinc-workstation since it was marked as unstable

#14

so was hoping to just built and use it until cinc-workstation was available as stable

#15

You’ll end up with the exacr reason we didn’t tag it stable, some trademarks still lingering in the output, we (cinc team) don’t think it’s fully trademark compliant. But at a functional level it should be OK (minus the tray icon application)