We performed a comparison between Chef and Microsoft Azure DevOps based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Release Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"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."
"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"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."
"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."
"It has been very easy to tie it into our build and deploy automation for production release work, etc. All the Chef pieces more or less run themselves."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"Most of the features are very valuable for us, especially the source code control and task management."
"We can forecast tasks and the number of hours a task will take and can compare it with how long a task actually takes."
"The integration of the whole cycle is the main strength of the tool. If I want to control the cycle with other tools on the market, I would have to use several tools. However, this is not the case with Azure DevOps or TFS."
"The reports have been most valuable. We have created some dashboards allowing us to be able to check our teams, their progress, and mission plans."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"Everything that's related to the pipeline has been very good."
"Most developers and project managers choose the Microsoft tools to begin with because of familiarity, and these new tools are almost an extension of the tools you're already familiar with. There's a lot of knowledge transfer, which helps, rather than bringing in a new product line."
"The work items option is incredibly flexible."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"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."
"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 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 could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"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."
"It is an old technology."
"Improving the metrics that are readily available on the dashboard would be very helpful."
"The tool was developed for Agile project methodology, but I've noticed that there has also been a try to incorporate what is typically done in MS Project, which is for more sequential Waterfall projects. The problem with that is that it is half-baked for Waterfall projects. If you're going to do it, then either go all the way and allow us to use the tool for both or don't do it at all."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps could improve by providing better integration with other tools. It is very easy to integrate with Azure, but when you need to integrate with other solutions, such as Amazon Web Services, is difficult."
"We are currently in the process of moving all of our on-prem to the cloud platform. We are trying to make that move and host the majority of our DevOps services in the cloud because the cloud is where most of the things are going nowadays. However, the process of this transfer is not straightforward, and it could be a lot easier. Microsoft hasn't provided the maturity for migration tools. It could be a lot easier in that respect. I want to see them continue to advance the API capabilities. They could add some more robust functionality to the administrative layer within ADO services. There are a lot of configuration elements that you need to take care of at the organization level and the project configuration level from an administrative capacity. When you're dealing with process templates and things of that nature, you have to do them all manually. Being able to automate some of that using scripts or API functionality would be really nice."
"Being more technology-agnostic through ease of integration would be beneficial."
"The interface is very bad."
"There are certain areas in Azure DevOps that are better in other products."
"I would like to see better interoperability with the agile scaling frameworks."
Chef is ranked 15th in Release Automation with 18 reviews while Microsoft Azure DevOps is ranked 1st in Release Automation with 127 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Azure DevOps 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 Azure DevOps writes "Allows us to deploy code to production without releasing certain features immediately and agile project management capabilities offer resource-leveling". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, BigFix, SaltStack and Microsoft Configuration Manager, whereas Microsoft Azure DevOps is most compared with GitLab, Jira, TFS, Rally Software and ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management. See our Chef vs. Microsoft Azure DevOps report.
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