It's sad that chef differs so much depending on server/solo usage: Without chef-server using so called "chef-solo" lacks a lot of good things: + (remote)

It's sad that chef differs so much depending on server/solo usage: Without chef-server using so called "chef-solo" lacks a lot of good things: + (remote) bootstrapping + distribution (like "little-chef"; non-official) + data bags (third party cookbook only; non-official) + search (e.g. on a central file system based data-base which gets dumped into a json that will be uploaded on bootstrap/update time (push)) As others stated, running your own chef-server (even external/paying for it) brings a new risc factor into your provisioning business and if you depend on data bags and search you'll most likely not be able to bootstrap new app servers when your chef server is down. This is a huge SPOF.