I’ve heard about the Chef Open-source and I wanted to start up a
lab environment to prove how valuable this product is for the company I work for. Is the
open-source version, the same as enterprise for 25 or less nodes using chef manage? Or does it
use command line for 100% of the tasks?
There is no longer any distinction between “Enterprise Chef” and “Open Source Chef”. The Chef Server is open source and free to use however you want. The stuff that costs money are the premium addons like the web UI and Chef Delivery/Compliance.
Just to make sure what @coderanger said is clear, there is currently only one version of the Chef Server and it is open source. You can use that for as many nodes as you’d like.
The add ons are not open source, but are free up to 25 nodes. So this includes the likes of Chef Manage and Chef Analytics, etc. Once you hit 25 nodes you either need to buy a license to continue using the add ons or you can switch to just using the command line.
The one exception is Push Jobs. It is packaged as an add on but is also open source and is free to use for as many nodes as you’d like.
Hopefully that answers your question @mbaker. This same information can be found on the Chef Server download page: https://downloads.chef.io/chef-server/
- Mark Mzyk
Chef Engineering Manager