Chef InSpec vs Sonobuoy

Chef InSpec tests and audits applications and infrastructure against a desired state described in InSpec code. Its runtime framework and rule language express compliance, security and policy requirements. Reusable profiles group controls and can include versioning, platform requirements and dependencies. Resources support testing AWS, Azure, AliCloud and GCP infrastructure, and users can create custom resources. Tests can run locally or against cloud services and infrastructure such as Linux in Docker containers. Results can be exported as JSON, HTML or plain text, or sent to Chef Automate. The kitchen-inspec verifier also runs profiles through Test Kitchen. Chef offers premium CIS- and STIG-based profiles for compliance scanning. The free tier is for non-production workloads and personal, non-commercial use; the 30-day trial is for product evaluation under non-production conditions. Commercial licensing covers production and non-production workloads, with entitlements based on purchase order. Chef InSpec 7 requires EULA acceptance, and license-key requirements depend on the distribution source. Telemetry is enabled for free and trial tiers, but not commercial users.

Sonobuoy is a free, open-source diagnostic tool for examining Kubernetes cluster state with non-destructive configuration tests. It can check a cluster against official Kubernetes specifications and produce diagnostics for troublesome workloads. Teams can build plugins for additional tests and data collection. Its default plugins run Kubernetes end-to-end tests and gather systemd logs; community options include CIS Benchmarks, Kube-hunter, Who-can, Cluster-Inventory, and Reliability Scanner. It is cluster agnostic and officially supports the latest three minor Kubernetes versions. Beginning with version 0.20, it supports Kubernetes 1.17 or later. Sonobuoy can run end-to-end tests with custom registries in air-gapped deployments. It requires an active Kubernetes cluster and an admin kubeconfig, and can be installed from binary releases or through Homebrew on macOS. The project provides community support through GitHub. Its documentation warns that default settings need explicit hardening, and notes that some logging and retrieval commands can fail on Docker Desktop Kubernetes.