Home

Itamae is a lightweight, Chef-inspired configuration management tool written in Ruby. It lets you define your infrastructure as code using a simple, readable DSL and apply it to local or remote machines.

Why Itamae?

• Simple – Minimal DSL with a gentle learning curve. If you know Chef, you already know Itamae.
• Lightweight – No server, no agent. Just a gem and your recipes.
• Flexible – Run locally, over SSH, inside Docker containers, or in FreeBSD jails.
• Extensible – Plugin system for custom resources and recipes distributed as gems.

Quick Example

# recipe.rb
package 'nginx' do
  action :install
end

service 'nginx' do
  action [:enable, :start]
end

template '/etc/nginx/nginx.conf' do
  source 'nginx.conf.erb'
  variables(worker_processes: 4)
  notifies :restart, 'service[nginx]'
end

# Apply locally
itamae local recipe.rb

# Apply via SSH
itamae ssh --host web01.example.com recipe.rb

# Apply to Vagrant VM
itamae ssh --vagrant --host default recipe.rb

Installation

Add to your Gemfile:

gem 'itamae', '~> 1.14', '>= 1.14.2'

Or install directly:

gem install itamae

Documentation