At the beginning of April we announced the release of Chef Client 14. Shortly after, I presented a live webinar: What’s new in Chef 14 and ChefDK 3. In case you missed it, watch a recording of the presentation below to see the newest features included in this release. You can download Chef 14 here.
Chef 14 represents a giant leap forward in Chef functionality, and is the largest release of Chef Client we’ve ever shipped. It includes dozens of new resources, helpers, and improved functionality across the board. No matter what platform you manage with Chef, there’s something new for you in Chef 14.
Everything you need to be successful should be included out the box. With Chef 14, we’ve added 27 new resources to Chef to make automating your systems easier than ever. We scoured our best community cookbooks and integrated some of the most commonly used resources directly into Chef. This lets you automate your systems without the need for external cookbook dependencies. Additionally, with every release of Chef, you’ll automatically get the latest and greatest functionality without the need to update cookbooks.
Chef 14 also gives you new tools for writing your own custom resources. You can now add deprecations to your own resources to communicate upcoming changes with users within your company or in the greater Chef community. These warnings work just like the built-in deprecation warnings and can be integrated into your CI process to better test dependent cookbooks. We’ve also improved logging with more useful debug level messaging, as well as adding the ability to better communicate failures in your custom resource properties. Finally, Chef 14 custom resources can now include full resource documentation directly in the code, which we plan to utilize in various parts of the ecosystem in the near future.
There’s no denying that Chef 14 has been a huge release for Windows users. One of the most noticeable additions is the 13 new Windows resources included out the box. Seven of these resources came from the Windows cookbook, and saw significant feature and performance enhancements. Even if you’ve used the Windows cookbook resources in the past, we think you’ll enjoy what’s new for Windows. In particular, this release adds key functionality for IT teams managing windows workstations. Chef 14 includes new configuration detection for workstations, and important workstation management resources such as windows_ad_join, windows_feature, windows_printer, and windows_printer_port.
We’ve included more resources for working with Homebrew and installing applications from DMG files.
We’ve included 5 new resources for working with the RedHat Subscription Manager to register nodes and patch systems.
We’ve entirely rewritten package installation with yum, resulting in large performance improvements and tons of new package installation functionality.
There’s plenty more new functionality so be sure to watch the webinar recording and take a look at the full release notes for Chef 14. You can download Chef 14 here.