Progress Chef licensing covers the Chef automation products: Chef Infra for configuration management, Chef InSpec for compliance scanning, Chef Habitat for application packaging, Chef Desktop for end-user devices, Chef Automate, and the Chef 360 platform. All Progress Chef on-premises products and Hosted Services are governed by the Progress Chef End User License Agreement, and their default licence type is “Subscription”.[1]
The grant is limited to the term and to the units paid for. Progress grants a licence “to (i) install and/or use the Product only for your internal use, whether on premises or in the cloud … and limited to the number of License Units for which you are current in the payment of the applicable License Fee”.[1] A License Unit is “a specific license type or metric, and a numeric quantity thereof, used in an Order”, and the types include “Node, Service Instance, Target and/or Endpoint”.[1]
Editions
The EULA does not name editions or prices. It distinguishes on-premises products, Hosted Services, Chef 360 installations and free-tier licences. For Chef 360 it defines three kinds of installation:[1]
- A Production Installation, used in live operation.
- A Non-Production Installation, used for testing and staging “before they are promoted to a production environment”.
- A Disaster Recovery Installation, “used solely and exclusively for backup and retention purposes”.
A Tenant is a user or group of users, such as a subsidiary or business unit, that shares access to the same Chef 360 instance or Nodes.[1] The Chef documentation separates free-tier users, trial users limited by time and features, commercial users “restricted based on the purchase order - #of days, #of nodes/target”, and community users of open-source builds.[2]
Metrics
- Node. “Each individual component of your system, physical or virtual (i.e., server, workstation, IP router, virtual machine, or other device or component) that is assessed, installed, configured, updated, scanned and/or managed through the use of Progress® Chef® Infra®”.[1] The documentation’s definition is wider and covers components managed “using any Chef product”.[2]
- Target. “Each instance of infrastructure, software, configuration, or other technical resource that is the compliance target of one or more Progress® Chef® InSpec® profiles”.[1] A scan is “a rules-based inspection of a target”, and many scans can apply to one target.[2]
- Service Instance. Each component “onto which one or more Progress® Chef® Habitat® packages are deployed”.[1]
- Endpoint. Each device managed by Chef Desktop, “such as laptops, desktops, tablets, and kiosk workstations, excluding, without limitation, servers”.[1]
The documentation also names “entitled content” as a Licensed Unit type. It defines the measurement of License Units as “a numerical value based on the bundle\SKU or add-ons customer has purchased”.[2]
Counting / floors
Units are bought in advance. “License Fees are based on Product purchased, not actual usage”, fees are non-cancellable, and “The number of License Units purchased cannot be decreased during the relevant License Term”.[1] Fees are paid in advance, in full or at the billing frequency in the Order. When units are added, the customer pays for them.[1]
Nodes are not interchangeable. The customer may not deploy beyond the units paid for, and “Nodes are not interchangeable or reusable among individual components of your system unless otherwise described in the Documentation”. The EULA’s example is that a server or workstation configured with Chef Infra is one Node, and that Node “may not be used to configure another server or workstation”.[1] Read literally, a rebuilt or replaced system is a new Node. Whether retired Nodes free up capacity depends on the Documentation and the measurement period.
Peak counting for dynamic infrastructure. For Chef licences bought through AWS Marketplace and used with AWS Systems Manager’s AWS-ApplyChefRecipes, Progress publishes a counting method. A node is any instance where Chef Infra Client is installed or executed, and “Every node where Chef Infra Client runs requires licensing coverage”.[3] To size a purchase, the customer identifies “the peak number of unique nodes during a 24-hour period”.[3] In auto-scaling groups, “licensing is based on the peak number of unique instances where the Chef solution runs within a 24-hour period. Temporary instances are included if the Chef solution executes on those systems during that window.”[3] Powered-off devices count if Chef ran on them during the window. Systems that are permanently removed stop counting once they fall outside the measurement period.[3] The same FAQ says licences must be bought up front, in defined quantities that can be expanded.[3]
Virtualization & partitioning
Chef counts managed objects, not processors. Physical and virtual components count alike, and “virtual machines that have a unique IP address are a separate Node from the physical machine on which they reside”.[1] A hypervisor host managed by Chef Infra and the guest virtual machines it manages are therefore separate Nodes. Containers are not named in the EULA. A container or host that runs Habitat packages is a Service Instance, and anything Chef Infra configures is a Node.[1]
Cloud / BYOL
The grant expressly allows use “on premises or in the cloud, including any information technology infrastructure”.[1] Chef is also sold through AWS Marketplace. AWS Systems Manager customers who use AWS-ApplyChefRecipes need a valid Chef licence, and they pass a Chef License ID to the automation.[3] Chef products offered as Hosted Services have an SLA. Progress holds customer content for 30 days after termination and then deletes it.[1]
Programs
- Subscription licence. Standard support, as described in the Chef service level agreement, is included during the License Term unless the Order states another level.[1]
- Third-party support. Customers may have some or all on-premises Chef products supported by a third party. These “Administered License Units” must be reported to Progress every month: the customer number, the support provider and “The number of Administered License Units for the prior month”, due “on or before the 10th day of the following month”. The License Term is independent of the third-party support term.[1]
- Free-Tier License. A no-charge licence to run Chef products “solely for your personal non-Commercial Purposes, to manage a limited number of the applicable Licensed Units”.[1] The EULA states in capitals that the free tier is “NOT AVAILABLE TO CORPORATIONS, GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, OTHER LEGAL ENTITIES, OR PERSONS INTENDING TO USE THE SOFTWARE FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES”. Progress may end it for convenience, it carries no support, and it ends automatically if the licensee sues Progress.[1]
- Professional services. These are bought by Order under Exhibit A, which has a 60-day workmanship warranty and a mutual one-year non-solicitation clause.[1]
Third-party components in Chef products, including open-source components, are governed by their own licences, listed at chef.io.[1] The commercial EULA governs the binaries Progress distributes. A customer who runs binaries built by others from the same source is outside the warranty: the warranty does not cover use with “any distribution or binary not provided to you by us, even if the distribution or binary is derived from the same source code as the Product”.[1]
Audits and compliance
Usage verification. On request, “not to be made more than twice during any twelve (12) month period without good cause”, the customer must deliver one or more of the following:[1]
- usage files and reports generated by the product;
- a complete usage audit report produced by following Progress’s instructions;
- a certification by an officer of the number of License Units used.
If Progress confirms that units were exceeded, “you agree to pay the then-current License Fees for the additional License Units used by you”.[1] This is in addition to the general audit clause.
Telemetry. Unless the customer disables the telemetry features, Progress receives Product Usage and Technical Support Data, including “your use of License Units and installations of the Product”.[1]
End of the licence. When a licence ends or is not renewed, the customer must certify in writing that it has stopped using the product, uninstalled it and destroyed all copies. It must also “run the Chef audit tool and within 5 days from receipt of our instructions provide a complete usage audit report”.[1]
The general audit clause (s.1.14) follows the same Progress template as other families. Progress may audit records and systems on site or remotely, records and log files are due within five business days, underpaid fees are invoiced “based on our list price in effect at the time the audit is completed”, and the customer pays audit costs if the shortfall exceeds 5% of fees paid.[1]
Out of scope
- Chef price lists and edition bundles, which Progress sells by quote and through marketplaces.
- Community distributions of Chef open-source code, which carry their own open-source licences.
- Exact free-tier unit limits, which the EULA refers to a documentation page that did not return content on the retrieval date.