Compare BigFix vs. Chef
BigFix is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 39 reviews while Chef is ranked 4th in Configuration Management with 13 reviews. BigFix is rated 8.4, while Chef is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of BigFix writes "Provides a single pane view into the entire environment". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Chef writes "It never uses any type of human-readable interface. Therefore, you don't have to go into a GUI nor use a command line tool". BigFix is most compared with SCCM, Ansible and Tanium, whereas Chef is most compared with SCCM, Ansible and BigFix. See our BigFix vs. Chef report.
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 Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: September 2019. 365,820 professionals have used our research since 2012. | |||||
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | |
The older version of the tools that I use also included the connectivity aspect, and the fact that the tool now has it separate from the collection of usage data makes the deployment of these tools much easier. One of the biggest benefits BigFix has had for our organization is the ease and efficiency to perform many different tasks, across pillars and platforms, all from one pane of glass. The most valuable feature is patch management, a must have, even for Linux and iOS. It's enabled us to have a highly successful endpoint patching program for the past decade. It's been enormously successful there. It's also become a core part of many of our business processes, from compliance monitoring of endpoints, encryption management, key escrow, and local administrator password escrow. It's built into our inventory. It's very much everywhere. Servers are patched more consistently than they have been previously. Being able to intelligently create reports, gather data, export CSVs and give that to the leadership of some of the client groups that my team supports has helped my organization. We are able to use BigFix through API connections to automate and reduce resources and time. The product's been great for us. It's increased the security posture ten-fold and it's increased our visibility across our endpoints enormously. BigFix has drastically reduced the maintenance window period to patch and reboot servers. | You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations. It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop. The scalability of the product is quite nice. The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby. This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time. The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints. Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy. 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. |
Cons | |
I self-taught for this online, so the initial setup was a little difficult to pick up at first. I had to create a couple of testing environments and destroy them in order to learn how to use it. There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of reading of the manuals. I would like to see SDK for Web UI included in the next release. I would like to see the Self Service section made more user-friendly. Around the scalability concern, I would like to see the ability to run teamed, clustered, or hierarchical root servers, in order to provide a more robust, high availability system. The single monolithic root server model does somewhat bother me. I would like to see the integration of user security between the different products to be improved. There's separate security for compliance, separate security for web reports, and the console, and you have to manage those things separately. The stability is generally pretty good. The one thing that we came across is the battle between load on endpoints and load on our servers and relays versus how quickly, effectively and reliably actions can be taken. I'd like to not have to take an action on a system while I'm working with someone and then have to say whether something will happen between five seconds or thirty minutes from that point. I would like to see API connectivity, built-in API connectors to the standard toolsets, whether it's for your ServiceNow or your Qualys. More API connectivity to make it easier to integrate to other tools. I would like to see a web UI SDK so we could take what is provided currently and be able to build our own customized web UI for particular customers that want to sell service. | 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 agent on the server sometimes acts finicky. I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation. 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. Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this. There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based. If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best. Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | |
Compliance, inventory, and licensing are really pricey. They should lower the price. It discourages users from getting onboard. The product is less costly when compared to other solutions, and this is a good solid solution for what we have paid. I would stay with the Managed Virtual Server license model, which is a 1-to-1 license per OS whether it is virtual or physical. When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing. | 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. We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time. 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. 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. 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. |
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Ranking  | |
Views 26,006 Comparisons 14,739 Reviews 37 Average Words per Review 547 Avg. Rating 8.4 | Views 4,392 Comparisons 3,240 Reviews 13 Average Words per Review 601 Avg. Rating 8.5 |
Top Comparisons | |
 Compared 47% of the time.  Compared 12% of the time.  Compared 5% of the time. | Compared 29% of the time. Compared 24% of the time.  Compared 13% of the time. |
Also Known As | |
| Tivoli Endpoint Manager | |
Learn | |
| HCL | Chef |
Overview | |
IBM BigFix provides complete visibility and control into all endpoints through a single, unified platform. Enterprises can now bridge the bridge the gap between threat detection and response, drastically reducing remediation times and costs by consolidating best-in-class EDR, enterprise asset discovery, endpoint interrogation, rich threat intelligence, multi-platform patch management (90+ OS) and software distribution. Security and operations teams can see, understand and act on all endpoint threats while proactively reducing the attack surface. • SEE: Discover and audit every endpoint, on or off the corporate network—and rapidly detect evasive attacks using behavioral analytics that understand how attackers compromise your endpoints. • UNDERSTAND: Guided investigation enables security analysts to understand the full context and scope of an attack based on real-time endpoint information, not just historical data. • ACT: Respond with purpose. BigFix provides the capability to deliver targeted remediation—not only on patient zero but enterprise-wide—in minutes or hours. | 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. |
Offer | |
Learn more about BigFix | Learn more about Chef |
Sample Customers | |
| US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation | Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap |
Top Industries | |
University20% Retailer17% Healthcare Company17% Manufacturing Company7% Software R&D Company27% Financial Services Firm9% Manufacturing Company8% Retailer7% | No Data Available |
Company Size | |
Small Business15% Midsize Enterprise12% Large Enterprise73% Small Business2% Midsize Enterprise15% Large Enterprise83% | Small Business13% Midsize Enterprise27% Large Enterprise60% |
Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: September 2019.
365,820 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See also BigFix Reviews, Chef Reviews, and our list of Best Configuration Management Companies.
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