Chef Infra vs Quattor
Chef Infra
chef.ioQuattor
quattor.orgSide by side
| Figure | Chef Infra | Quattor |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $4.92/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · Orchestration / Provisioning Software | 8.5 (#7) | 7.8 (#17) |
| Spec score · Configuration Management Tools | 8.5 (#7) | 7.8 (#13) |
| Purpose | Chef Infra configuration management software automates infrastructure configuration and aims to keep it consistent and compliant over its lifetime. | Quattor is a system administration toolkit for automated installation, configuration, and management of clusters, farms, grids, and clouds. |
| Support | The pricing page lists standard support for Business and Enterprise and premium support for Enterprise Plus. | Quattor is developed and supported by its user community, with discussion through a mailing group and issue or pull request reporting on GitHub. |
Plans
Chef Infra
- Business$59 a year
- Enterprise$189 a year
- Enterprise PlusPriced on request
In their own words
Chef Infra
Chef Infra automates infrastructure configuration and helps keep systems aligned with a defined desired state. Teams express configurations and policies as code, test them, and deliver them through automated pipelines; Chef Infra can correct configuration drift when systems diverge. It supports Windows and Linux systems, cloud ARM systems, and Mac laptops across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments. Chef Infra Client includes more than 150 resources, while the community provides thousands of configuration templates. Chef Workstation bundles the client with Chef InSpec, Chef Habitat, Test Kitchen, Cookstyle, and Chef Upgrade Lab. The policy language is Ruby DSL, and listed capabilities include policy testing, reporting, and CI/CD integration. The free community version is non-commercial. Business costs $59 a year per node, and Enterprise costs $189 a year per node; Enterprise Plus requires a customized quote. Chef Infra Client 19.x is listed as the current LTS release, while 18.x is deprecated and earlier versions are end of life.
Quattor
Quattor is free, open-source Linux software for automating installation, configuration, and lifecycle management across clusters, farms, grids, and clouds. Its self-hosted architecture uses a configuration-management database server, an Automated Installation Infrastructure server, and managed clients; the two servers may share one machine. AII plugins handle DHCP and PXE setup and create Kickstart files for Enterprise Linux-derived systems. Client components retrieve and validate profiles, then run configuration components. Quattor validates system descriptions before deployment, and its Pan compiler converts declarative configuration into nested structures including XML and JSON. Modular interfaces allow replacement implementations and site-specific tools, with components for core and grid services. The site describes deployments ranging from tens of systems to more than 30,000. It supports Enterprise Linux, including Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux, and is licensed under Apache 2.0 and the EU DataGrid Software License. Community users provide development and support.