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."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."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"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."
"One of the main features is the user interface is very good."
"Our technical sales staff and business development people need to know how far the developers are on any product that we're developing. DevOps makes it easier for you to see how far along they are with the work because they have a repository where they store everything. There is a portal where you can see what has been done, what has been tested, what is working, and what isn't. I have a huge dashboard with an overview of what the development team is doing from an executive point of view."
"It is stable, and we have had no issues with it."
"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 initial setup process is easy."
"What I like the most is the DevOps Boards. It's easy to create a hierarchical project structure, assign tasks to people, and to track their tasks."
"The product is easy to use...It is a stable solution."
"This platform provides a large span of tools and technologies."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"It is an old technology."
"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."
"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."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"It should have security features for scanning the code and checking it for vulnerability and security. Currently, I am using other tools for this. It should also have integration with other tools to improve security."
"The ability to extend work items was more flexible than it is now. Talking version control, one of our customers had some issues because they found it very difficult to manage more than 1000 repositories for one team project."
"When we don't have some permissions, we have to research how to get them."
"I think that the integration is to some extent, immature."
"Improving the metrics that are readily available on the dashboard would be very helpful."
"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."
"The price could be lowered. It would be nice if it was cheaper."
"Microsoft could focus on refining the reporting and dashboard elements of Azure DevOps to improve it."
Chef is ranked 12th in Release Automation with 18 reviews while Microsoft Azure DevOps is ranked 1st in Release Automation with 124 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Azure DevOps 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 Microsoft Azure DevOps writes "Good support, helpful management capabilities, and great Kanban boards". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Configuration Manager, BigFix and SaltStack, 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.
See our list of best Release Automation vendors.
We monitor all Release Automation 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.
