Can I verify drivers, services and environment variables with Chef Infra on a Windows 10 platform?

Question

I'm trying to verify Windows 10 consoles that MUST be exactly the same from a software standpoint. I plan to use Chef to facilitate this. Every aspect of the console must match its counterparts down to driver versions.

Answer 1

Chef is not a tool for verifying the state of a system. Chef is about maintaining consistency in different resources (directory, service, etc.) of a system, and across systems.

For example, you could ensure that a particular version of driver/software is installed, or a service is running. This can be done by defining state of such resources, and those resources will be managed.

Every aspect of the console must match its counterparts down to driver versions

"Every aspect" is a very wide and sweeping requirement. The resources Chef can manage (linked above) out of the box can be a good starting point to see how much of your requirement is covered. Keep in mind that some resources are not OS agnostic. It is possible to come up with custom resources to manage other aspects, but it will require a level of familiarity and learning.

Answer 2

You can try using Chef Inspec for that. There is a list of available resources, that it is able to test: https://docs.chef.io/inspec/resources/ . If there no built-in resource that you require, you can write your own in ruby.

Chef Inspec can be run on machine through Chef Client audit cookbook.