How to trigger deployments to Chef managed environments from Release Management 2013 with Update 3 RC

This post introduces the integration of Chef-managed environments with Release Management 2013 Update 3 RC. It details the steps to configure Release Management Server as a Chef Workstation, install necessary Ruby gems (knife-windows, knife-reporting), create 'Standard Environments' in Release Management to represent Chef-managed infrastructure, and register Chef nodes. It also explains how to define vNext components with build drop locations and configure the 'Deploy Using Chef' action within a release definition, specifying parameters such as NodeName, IsUnixNode, Username/Password, Component Name, Attribute Name, KnifeInstallationPath, and ChefRepoPath. The post highlights differences between vNext and Agent-based release pipelines, noting limitations in flow controls, environment types, and agent-less deployments.