A LITERATURE STUDY ON CHEF - AN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AGENT

Chef is an open source software agent that automates your infrastructure by turning it into code.Our proposal involves using chef for configuring a sytem for a new employee or employees data to a new system. Presently,after reimage of a system for a new employee or to a new system, configuration of user for some softwares/tools like skype, outlook which needs user data configuration are done manually. CHEF is an automation tool with which we can automate this process by providing user data as parameters for a script.Using CHEF any security patches installation/update of antivirus can be pushed/automated directly to the employee machines. All these can be done with a central CHEF server containting runlist , and a workstation to modify/customise existing scripts to add new features.CHEF also provides a UI interface through which we can manage client machines and their corresponding runlists(components installed using chef).Using this kind of environment reduces maunual efforts in configuring new machines for employees.As everything is automated it reduces time for customizing new systems. Using CHEF for automation of user systems configuration saves effor and time thus increasing productivity.