AWS OpsWorks Uses Opscode Chef as Default Automation Engine

It has been an eventful February here at Opscode.  As many of you know, on February 4^th, we announced that Facebook is using Private Chef to automate the configuration and management of its web-tier infrastructure. That is some hefty validation of Chef at dramatic scale.

Then, this week, both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Opscode announced that Opscode Chef is the automation engine for AWS’ new application management solution OpsWorks.

But what does that mean? Well, in short, AWS OpsWorks uses Chef as the framework to automate everything from configuring server instances to deploying applications in AWS cloud environments. AWS OpsWorks comes preconfigured with a default collection of Chef cookbooks for automating standard infrastructure operations, ensuring consistency and control throughout the application development and application deployment process. Using Opscode Chef, AWS OpsWorks delivers a flexible, automated, end-to-end solution for simplifying application management – awesome.

You can read more about AWS OpsWorks here and here, while an FAQ about OpsWorks’ use of Chef is here.

It’s worth noting that OpsWorks is using an earlier version of Chef Solo, not Chef server and not Ospcode’s most recent release, Chef 11, which became available for free download on February 4^th. As you might expect, we’ve made some significant enhancements (with a big hand from all of you in the Community) to Chef in the latest release, including rewriting the API in Erlang to dramatically increase its scalability, moving the database to PostgreSQL from CouchDB, further enhancing Windows integration and support, and providing ‘one-click’ installation for the Chef 11 server. You can read all about Chef 11 here, here and here and can also contact our services team, who offer a two-tiered support subscription plan for users looking to get productive with Chef as quickly as possible. They can also help you use Chef to retain the flexibility to change, move, shut down and recreate your cloud infrastructure in whatever way best meets your needs, as Chef features seamless API integration with all the major cloud providers, including AWS, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute Engine, and many more.

If we take a step back and look at Facebook, AWS, and the hundreds of customers using Chef-based products today, what becomes clear is that the rate of innovation in IT is not only astounding, but is also creating a significant skills gap as the scale and complexity of the new generation of IT infrastructure is far outpacing the people available to manage these deployments. Facebook encountered this challenge and turned to Private Chef™ for the solution. Amazon’s cloud service is one of the primary factors driving a rapid proliferation of scale-out IT environments, so they’ve come through with a nicely packaged management solution for their users, based on Chef. And, as so many of the you in the Community know, Chef helps you each solve some of the hardest infrastructure challenges on the planet, day in and day out. That’s why we’re here, this is what we love, and we think it’s all pretty freakin’ awesome.