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."Autopilot is a great feature. Most users are looking for a zero-touch deployment."
"The tool's most valuable feature is Autopilot."
"It is quite policy-enabled, so you can build pretty much any policy to manage remote endpoints."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is having all our devices compliant with our policies."
"The key benefit of Intune is its integration with the Microsoft ecosystem."
"Easy to use."
"It is user-friendly, and the performance is also good. It is a convenient product"
"We have not experienced any bugs or glitches with this solution."
"The solution's ability to scale is good."
"Has a variety of automation options."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is user-friendly"
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"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."
"There's quite a lot of development that they can do within their Intune dashboard. I think there are too many lines hyperlinked to move you around. Others, in contrast, give you a simple dashboard and an intuitive administrative walkthrough."
"There is room for improvement in integrating additional features such as Purview and SharePoint activities into Intune."
"The security features should be improved."
"Microsoft Intune could enhance its patch management for various devices, ensuring regular updates and tracking of device privileges."
"Intune has limited integration with non-Microsoft solutions."
"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."
"Reporting could be improved. It needs to be more expensive and robust."
"It would be good if, in addition to the minimal patching and compliance, we could also use Intune for application deployment. For instance, if a device is not patched, Intune should have the ability to push not only a Microsoft patch but also other patches, such as a browser patch."
"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."
"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."
"Additional features can be added as per customer requirements."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"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."
"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."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
AWS Systems Manager is ranked 7th in Configuration Management with 5 reviews while Chef is ranked 15th 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 "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". 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, Microsoft Configuration Manager, BigFix and SaltStack. See our AWS Systems Manager 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.
