Opscode has extended the capabilities of its Chef IT configuration and automation platform beyond just compute to cover networking and storage infrastructure in a new release called Enterprise Chef. The firm also announced it is working with Microsoft to better integrate Chef with the widely used Windows PowerShell tool.

Available immediately, Enterprise Chef builds on the existing capabilities of Chef for automating the provisioning and configuration of servers, based on reusable definitions called cookbooks and recipes that are written using the Ruby programming language.

Enterprise Chef is now able to automate the provisioning and management of compute, networking and storage resources, according to the firm, greatly extending its use for configuration management in the data centre, especially in the operation of both public and private cloud infrastructure.

Adam Jacob, Opscode co-founder and chief customer officer, said that businesses are in the midst of a major transformation in the way they operate their IT services, and need greater flexibility in deploying and managing infrastructure.

“Today we’re delivering an automation platform that accelerates this transformation by delivering on-demand IT services to achieve the speed necessary for meeting the new expectations of customers,” he said.

To help support this expansion of its capabilities, Opscode said it is collaborating with leading networking vendors to integrate Enterprise Chef into next-generation networking technologies, enabling it to automate networking port configuration and provisioning of bandwidth.

These vendors include Cisco, Juniper Networks, Arista Networks, Cumulus Networks and developer of software-defined networking tools Plexxi.

Meanwhile, Opscode is working with Microsoft to integrate Chef with Windows PowerShell, specifically the Desired State Configuration feature of the Windows Management Framework (WMF). This will provide administrators with new options to automate Windows resources in the data centre, the firm said.

While Chef was previously available in separate Private Chef and Hosted Chef versions, Enterprise Chef effectively replaces both with a single release that can be operated as on-premise software or as a hosted service.

Pricing starts at $6 (£3.80) per node for both deployment models, but Enterprise Chef is free to deploy for five nodes or fewer.