We performed a comparison between Chef and SaltStack 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."There has been a noticeable increase in productivity for both my organization and clients."
"The solution is easy to use and it has good performance."
"The most valuable feature is probably mobile device management. Small businesses are coming under greater scrutiny and requirements for compliance as time goes on. We don't have to worry about a VPN because we can manage these devices, control company data, and lock users out. If needed, we can remotely wipe devices and deadman-switch them."
"Intune can wipe devices. For example, if a disgruntled employee wants to leak the data on their company phone, Intune can terminate their access and wipe the entire device with a click."
"We are using the mobile feature, and we are also using MDM to lock the devices, to push restrictions, et cetera"
"The performance of Microsoft Intune is good."
"We have a BYOD policy, and this solution helps us manage our devices."
"Intune provides full endpoint visibility and IT control across device platforms. You can individualize it for your company with the Intune Company Portal app."
"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."
"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 is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"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."
"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 most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale."
"I want to build automation that is intelligent, part of the fabric of our environment, and is somewhat self-sustaining. I think SaltStack can help me do this."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"It is a highly stable solution."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"Intune's areas for improvement revolve around security and certificate management."
"What would make this product better is adding more security policies and features in the next upgrade."
"Technical support is not that great."
"One area for improvement is app deployment. Another is the Windows update rollout. If you're rolling out an object to a device that's offline, Intune stops trying to reach this device after it sits idle for a bit. We are forced to find a workaround that could help manage that."
"Microsoft Intune could enhance its patch management for various devices, ensuring regular updates and tracking of device privileges."
"The technical support could be improved."
"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."
"The add-ons must be integrated into the solution."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"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."
"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."
"It is difficult to set up."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"Web UI."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."
Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while SaltStack is ranked 14th in Configuration Management with 33 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while SaltStack is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SaltStack writes "Orchestration tool that powers automation of processes with the click of a button". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and CFEngine Enterprise, whereas SaltStack is most compared with VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Configuration Manager, HashiCorp Terraform, Red Hat Satellite and Automic Workload Automation. See our Chef vs. SaltStack report.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors.
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