Summary
Chef is a powerful configuration management platform that uses Ruby DSL-based cookbooks to define infrastructure state; CINC is the freely licensed community build of Chef that removes proprietary branding and licence restrictions.
What is Chef / CINC?
Chef follows a client-server model: Chef Infra Client runs on each managed node and periodically connects to Chef Infra Server to retrieve the policies (run lists of cookbooks) assigned to it. Cookbooks contain recipes—Ruby files describing resources like packages, files, and services—that converge the node to the desired state.
CINC (CINC Is Not Chef) was created because Chef Software changed its licensing in 2019, making commercial use of pre-built binaries require a paid subscription. CINC builds the same source code and distributes it under open-source terms, maintaining drop-in compatibility.
The ecosystem includes Chef InSpec (or CINC Auditor) for compliance testing, Chef Habitat for application packaging, and Test Kitchen for integration testing of cookbooks.
Why is Chef / CINC relevant?
- Mature ecosystem: Large library of community cookbooks and extensive enterprise adoption
- Compliance integration: Chef InSpec enables infrastructure compliance as code alongside configuration
- Scalability: Pull-based model scales to thousands of nodes without a central orchestrator bottleneck
- Open-source option: CINC provides a fully free path for organisations avoiding proprietary licensing