We performed a comparison between AWS Systems Manager and Chef 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."...Intune itself integrates with that entire Microsoft ecosystem. As an individual product itself, it's okay. It holds up. But when you start saying "I've bought this as part of a wider solution, as a company we are going Microsoft throughout," then it makes more sense to have Microsoft Intune... so you have that single dashboard."
"The central administration con dashboard is very easy to use and provides very good oversight on all that needs to be monitored."
"It is a stable solution."
"The synchronization of Intune with other Microsoft solutions is a valuable feature."
"I like the tool's integration with Apple. Anyone who creates an ID in Intune will get an Apple ID."
"The conditional access policies that we set up are very useful."
"Mobile device management is most valuable."
"One of the biggest advantages of Microsoft Intune is that it brings the management of Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and even Linux under a single pane of glass."
"The solution is user-friendly"
"With AWS Systems Manager, our company can patch our systems directly from it, so we don't need to patch our systems manually."
"When we do the automation in the cloud, we use the SSM agent. This helps us to test our automation and documents, and monitor the cloud."
"Has a variety of automation options."
"AWS provides Auto Scaling groups."
"The solution's ability to scale is good."
"Systems Manager has a feature where it analyzes the logs and gives us a performance overview in the form of a graph. We know when it's taking up more resources and when there are spikes, so we can predict the usability."
"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."
"I wanted to monitor a hybrid cloud environment, one using AWS and Azure. If I have to provision/orchestrate between multiple cloud platforms, I can use Chef as a one-stop solution, to broker between those cloud platforms and orchestrate around them, rather than going directly into each of the cloud-vendors' consoles."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"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."
"Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"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."
"When somebody has a customized application or their own company's application, we cannot deploy that application."
"I have a lot of Apple products in my environment. It would be nice to have an improved integration of Apple products with Microsoft Intune without Jam."
"It's only good for a Microsoft environment."
"Microsoft needs to enhance device-level security, as sometimes when using Microsoft Intune, the device's operating system becomes stuck and requires a full uninstall to remove the Intune bug."
"We would like to see support for Chrome and/or devices for Chromebooks."
"Microsoft Intune lags market leaders, such as Apperian, in its MAM capabilities."
"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."
"The fact that AWS Systems Manager takes time to complete the patching process, makes it an area where improvements are required."
"Additional features can be added as per customer requirements."
"The AWS UIs are not the most intuitive. Also, the usability needs room for improvement."
"Lacks sufficient integrations."
"The current challenge is that we can't pull any incidents from other accounts."
"We formerly used third-party products to analyze the log, give us information, and find bottlenecks. Systems Manager could provide more tools that conduct this analysis, so we don't have to do it ourselves."
"AWS does not have EKS cluster backup."
"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."
"It is an old technology."
"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
AWS Systems Manager is ranked 6th in Configuration Management with 7 reviews while Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews. AWS Systems Manager is rated 8.0, while Chef is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of AWS Systems Manager writes "Offers a variety of automation options; simplifies governance and administration ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Chef writes "Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation". AWS Systems Manager is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Red Hat Satellite, AWS CloudFormation and SaltStack, whereas Chef is most compared with Jenkins, Microsoft Azure DevOps, BigFix, SaltStack and Microsoft Configuration Manager. See our AWS Systems Manager vs. Chef report.
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