We performed a comparison between Chef and Microsoft Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The solution is easy to use and it has good performance."
"Its direct integration with all the other products that we have from Microsoft is valuable. We're using the E5 license, and we have a whole wealth of different products available. It just makes it easier to have everything from one provider."
"It's easy to manage and easy to configure."
"Easy to use."
"The solution is stable."
"While I don't think you can ever have full visibility and control, Intune certainly allows us to see the applications being used and tells us if things like Windows patches aren't applied to machines. It does a good job. That visibility makes life a little easier."
"We have a BYOD policy, and this solution helps us manage our devices."
"It's really easy to access."
"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast. Chef-docker enabled us to have fewer sets of source code for different purposes. Configuration management was a breeze and all the servers were as good as immutable servers."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"If you're handy enough with DSL and you can present your own front-facing interface to your developers, then you can actually have a lot more granular control with Chef in operations over what developers can perform and what they can't."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"One thing that we've been able to do is a tiered permission model, allowing developers and their managers to perform their own operations in lower environments. This means a manager can go in and make changes to a whole environment, whereas a developer with less access may only be able to change individual components or be able to upgrade the version for software that they have control over."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"Technical support is very helpful and very responsive."
"Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is very scalable."
"This solution helps us by automating the patching of our system."
"You can remote control or RDP. That has been the most valuable because we can go into one console and can get to anything we want. Instead of going to all these different consoles, we centralized everything."
"It is a very good solution. It has a good interface and is easy to use. On top of that, it is very reliable in terms of distribution as well as getting the report."
"SCCM does everything from A to Z for a Windows operating system."
"It uses detailed descriptions of the workstations, and that is good for me."
"The ability to make collections and deploy to them has been great."
"When somebody has a customized application or their own company's application, we cannot deploy that application."
"Lacking in features such as Wi-Fi and network security."
"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."
"The product needs to upgrade itself when the server is overloaded."
"We haven't really gone through all the features of Intune. We are just discovering them. Every day, we see a new feature that we want to apply, but what will be great for Intune is to be able to deploy apps in a simple fashion. We should be able to easily install various apps on the Windows platform, iOS, and Android. Currently, we have to write some scripts. It's not as straightforward as we would like it to be. It should be simplified so that we can do it just with three clicks—next, next, finish—without needing to write a script."
"The solution could be improved by the opportunity to connect third-party application databases, such as Chocolatey or another setup store, to Intune."
"The pricing can be expensive if you are not combining it with other products."
"There should be more support for macOS. Even though macOS is supported by Intune and Microsoft is working very hard to get more features into Intune to manage macOS, that's one thing they can give a lot more attention to."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."
"The solution is a bit heavy on the sources such as RAM or CPU and the software needs to be a bit lighter."
"Their compliance reporting is not accurate, and they admitted it on the phone when we had a call with them. We were trying to understand why their numbers didn't match on our compliance reports. It is not accurate and you cannot depend on the compliance reports. The numbers just don't match, and we can't figure out why. We called Microsoft and they said, "Yeah, that's a known issue." But there is no word that they're working on it."
"The configuration of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager could be improved, it is a bit complicated."
"In terms of the monitoring, the timeframe it takes to actually report back on the compliance of a device after it has been patched is a bit too long."
"The ability to integrate MDM would be great."
"They should improve their anti-malware policies like the SCEP policies. For instance, you can't have different policies for different servers, there is only one policy in all the servers, and everything is covered under that. For example, say you want to scan one group of servers on Saturday, and then you want to scan another group of servers on Sunday, you can't do that. You have to scan all your servers, a regular scan or a full scan, on the same day and at the same time. That's definitely one thing they need to resolve. In the next release, it would actually be nice if they included Apple products. It will also help if you can use Intune again. Their compliance reporting feature could also be better. They can maybe work a bit on that for patching now. It would be better if SCCM came with the functions of Right Click Tools built-in. If SCCM would have all those functions already built-in, we won't have to go and spend $5,000, just as an add-in from another company to get those functions."
"The tool's deployment can be cumbersome."
"Management of Linux devices could be improved."
More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management with 78 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Seamless system updates, useful integration, and reliable". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, SaltStack and BigFix, whereas Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, ManageEngine Endpoint Central, BigFix, Tanium and AWS Systems Manager. See our Chef vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager report.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors.
We monitor all Configuration Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
