AWS CloudFormation vs Chef comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AWS CloudFormation 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.
To learn more, read our detailed AWS CloudFormation vs. Chef Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"In terms of technical support, you will get an immediate response.""Maturity makes it a stable product.""Compliance and the policies that can be set are the most valuable features.""Its protection policies are most valuable. It protects mobile devices as well as individual apps. It is pretty scalable, and its documentation is also pretty good. It is also pretty straightforward to deploy.""The solution is stable.""It's very informative when there is an error. It allows us to backtrace where the error is and resolve that ourselves. It's a bit of a Swiss Army penknife. We find that it fixes most issues.""Among the most valuable features are the Company Portal that is built into Intune, and the update rings so that we can manage what types of future updates the devices get.""The solution is scalable. We currently have tens of thousands of users within our organization using the solution."

More Microsoft Intune Pros →

"The solution has helped with automation. I don't have to worry about provisioning machines and ensuring everything is set up. AWS CloudFormation takes care of the entire infrastructure for me.""The most valuable feature of AWS CloudFormation is the simple tracking of infrastructure.""There is a cost-benefit to using CloudFormation that comes about because of the automation that it provides.""AWS CloudFormation has automated the resource-building process, thereby removing the scope of human errors. We can tag the resources which help the billing process.""Its ability to treat infrastructure's code is valuable. It makes things automatable and reproducible.""Versioning makes our work easy.""The most beneficial aspect lies in its capability to handle input acquisition and assessment.""The CloudFormation template can be reused to create multiple stacks, reducing duplications and improving our infrastructure."

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"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.""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.""Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.""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.""The scalability of the product is quite nice.""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."

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Cons
"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.""In terms of what can be improved, I am looking for better enhancements regarding Apple management, not only on the mobile device, but also on the laptop.""It would help if administrators could pinpoint the exact location of a stolen device to help law enforcement retrieve it and apprehend the suspect.""It would be nice to have a location tracker for the mobile device management tool. I'm not sure if it exists but hasn't been configured or if it's missing, but we've been unable to utilize the location features.""Intune does not provide real-time visibility.""The synchronization could be improved.""There is no catalog for mobile access management (MAM) security.""Lacking ability to leverage more iOS device management internally."

More Microsoft Intune Cons →

"The conditions that can be added in AWS CloudFormation are not as powerful as any programming language.""If you are a developer or a more technical person, it's very difficult to learn the complete syntax or because CloudFormation includes a new way to write infrastructure code.""The solution needs to offer better support to other cloud vendors.""Error-handling features can be improved.""The speed of the replication process could improve. It can take some time to replicate that could use a speed increase.""This tool is not intuitive and there are others that are easier to understand.""There could be better error handling. It would be a good way to improve the solution.""CloudFormation is not particularly good at handling cross-account dynamic references. If you try to refer to an object that CloudFormation has created in a separate AWS account, it tends to fall apart. That's because it is a byproduct of the multi-tenant configuration. This is the most glaring shortcoming in my perspective because you can't dynamically reference objects in other accounts that CloudFormation has created, but it is not a shortcoming that you can't overcome. This is the only pain point that I've come across that didn't have a workaround natively. Sometimes the confirmation is slow, and it could be faster. The downside to CloudFormation when you're fully embracing it is that the AWS services do not get released immediately fully CloudFormation enabled. If you need to use the latest AWS service that just got announced or reinvented, you're not going to be able to continue with CloudFormation for the first X number of months. This is because they develop the products separately, and then they hand it to the CloudFormation team, which later on develops a CloudFormation integration. So, if you need to be on the newest thing AWS has, CloudFormation is often going to be a constraint that prevents you from doing that."

More AWS CloudFormation Cons →

"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that.""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.""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 AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved.""Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms.""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."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Consider the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite rather than choosing specific sub-components, e.g. only Microsoft Intune."
  • "There is a cost benefit of using Microsoft Intune because of the packaging with other Microsoft products."
  • "Microsoft Intune is a cost effective choice. It is less expensive than other products on the market."
  • "The purchase of the product was handled by someone else."
  • "I have no comment on pricing of the solution."
  • "The product is offered as part of a Microsoft standard bundle. The pricing can be competitive to Airwatch, and Maas360."
  • "For Microsoft 365 E5 clients, cost is not an issue as this product is one of the benefits."
  • "The price of Intune is included with the license for Office 365, so we don't have to pay anything extra for it."
  • More Microsoft Intune Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This solution is free to use and does not require a license."
  • "AWS CloudFormation doesn't have any cost because it's only the resources that you deploy with the solution that'll incur costs."
  • "If you compared serverless and container-based, serverless is less expensive. If you use certain instances the price can increase and become too expensive."
  • "The price of the solution is good because it is scalable."
  • "The solution's cost is normal, neither cheap nor expensive."
  • "The pricing is not notably high."
  • "The product is free."
  • More AWS CloudFormation Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."
  • "The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."
  • "The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."
  • "Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."
  • "We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
  • "We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
  • "I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."
  • "Pricing for Chef is high."
  • More Chef Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes it… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of… more »
    Top Answer: Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also… more »
    Top Answer:There is less support for on-premise environments. We get support from third-party vendors from AWS Partner Network in… more »
    Top Answer:Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.
    Top Answer:Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
    CloudFormation
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Intune is a comprehensive cloud-based service that allows you to remotely manage mobile devices and mobile applications without worrying about the security of your organization’s data. Device and app management can be used on company-owned devices as well as personal devices.

    In an increasingly mobile workforce, Microsoft Intune keeps your sensitive data safe while on the move. Microsoft Intune makes it possible for your team members to work anywhere using their mobile devices. Microsoft Intune provides both the flexibility and the control needed for securing all your data on the cloud, no matter where the device with the data is located.

    Microsoft Intune Device Management Key Features

    With Microsoft Intune Device Management you can:

    • Ensure devices and apps are compliant with your security requirements.
    • Rapidly deploy and authenticate apps on all company devices.
    • Remotely access devices to troubleshoot issues or to remove data from them.
    • Generate reports for all devices in the system.
    • Monitor the way users access and share information to protect company information.
    • Set rules and configure settings on personal and organization-owned devices to access data and networks.
    • Create user groups and device groups, allowing you to rapidly access many users and devices simultaneously.

    Mobile Application Management

    Mobile application management in Intune is designed to protect your organization’s data at the application level.

    With Microsoft Intune Application Management you can:

    • Configure apps to run with specific settings enabled.
    • Update existing apps that are already on the device.
    • See reports on which apps are used and monitor their usage.
    • Selectively wipe organization data from apps.
    • Add mobile apps to user groups and devices.

    As part of Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suite, Intune integrates with Microsoft Entra ID for access control and with Azure Information Protection for data protection. It also integrates with Microsoft 365 Applications.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Microsoft Intune stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to secure all devices under its management and the flexibility that the solution offers its users.

    A computing services manager notes, "Its security is most valuable. It gives us a way to secure devices, not only those that are steady. We do have a few tablets and other devices, and it is a way for us to secure these devices and manage them. We know they're out there and what's their status. We can manage their life cycle and verify that they're updated properly."

    The head of IT engineering at a financial services company writes, "The one feature we find most useful is the Mobile Application Manager. There are two types: we have the complete MDM and the Mobile Application Manager (MAM). We don't give our users phones, it is their own personal phone, and we need to allow them to have access to the company details on their phone. We need to create a balance between their own personal data and the company data. We deploy the Mobile Application Manager for them so that we won't be able to interfere with their own personal data."

    AWS CloudFormation provides a common language for you to model and provision AWS and third party application resources in your cloud environment. AWS CloudFormation allows you to use programming languages or a simple text file to model and provision, in an automated and secure manner, all the resources needed for your applications across all regions and accounts. This gives you a single source of truth for your AWS and third party resources.

    Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

    Sample Customers
    Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
    Nextdoor, Coinbase, Expedia
    Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization23%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Government7%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Construction Company10%
    Wellness & Fitness Company10%
    Non Profit10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Educational Organization6%
    Retailer6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Comms Service Provider20%
    Non Tech Company10%
    Legal Firm10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise47%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business48%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise68%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business5%
    Midsize Enterprise35%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise69%
    Buyer's Guide
    AWS CloudFormation vs. Chef
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CloudFormation vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    AWS CloudFormation is ranked 9th in Configuration Management with 20 reviews while Chef is ranked 15th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews. AWS CloudFormation is rated 8.2, while Chef is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of AWS CloudFormation writes "Pretty easy setup with great automations for provisioning that save time and money". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". AWS CloudFormation is most compared with AWS Systems Manager, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Spring Cloud, Red Hat Satellite and SaltStack, whereas Chef is most compared with Jenkins, Microsoft Azure DevOps, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Configuration Manager and Nolio Release Automation. See our AWS CloudFormation vs. Chef 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.