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."Autopilot is a great feature. Most users are looking for a zero-touch deployment."
"The most valuable feature for us is the security, including risk analysis and patch management."
"If the product works, remote access will be a benefit. To this point we have not had reason to have confidence in achieving that access."
"It's not working perfectly, but Microsoft's Autopilot offers great visibility into automated deployment solutions."
"It allows our clients to have the confidence to centrally manage policies for security. It helps them in securing the organization from a technology aspect."
"It's easy to manage."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"Configuration profiles, remediation, scripts, and auto-pilot features are very good."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"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."
"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."
"Stable and scalable configuration management and automation tool. Installing it is easy. Its most valuable feature is its compliance, e.g. it's very good."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"The ease of usability is the most valuable feature. It's user-friendly."
"It's a stable product."
"The product is useful for patch management."
"With the right administrator, application deployment can do wonders."
"The solution effectively handles inventory management, deployment, and reporting."
"The most valuable features are Remote Connect, SUP, Cloud functionality, Report, Query, and third-party patching."
"This solution captures all the devices in our infrastructure."
"SCCM does everything from A to Z for a Windows operating system."
"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 pricing could be improved."
"Intune's areas for improvement revolve around security and certificate management."
"It would be helpful if there was proactive remediation."
"The technical support could be improved."
"An issue we have run into with Microsoft Endpoint Manager is that we cannot patch third-party products like Adobe and Chrome with it."
"The main disadvantage seen today is regarding Linux clients. We have a lot of development resources that have Linux on their clients, and we can't manage them on the same platform, as we do with other clients such as macOS and Windows. So, it should have support for Linux clients. It should also have better support for macOS."
"We would like to see support for Chrome and/or devices for Chromebooks."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"It is an old technology."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"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 AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"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 rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"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."
"It would be of benefit if Configuration Manager could be connected/integrated with multiple Microsoft Intune subscriptions rather than just one (the current limit)."
"This solution needs to be supported on all Operating systems."
"It is not easy to get good technical support, especially at level one."
"They need to improve the support for the Mac operating system."
"The solution can be improved with the addition of a mobile device manager."
"Initial setup was complex. There's a lot that goes into it."
"The tool's deployment is difficult. Microsoft needs to improve documentation with videos."
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.
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