We performed a comparison between Chef and vCenter Configuration Manager 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."If the product works, remote access will be a benefit. To this point we have not had reason to have confidence in achieving that access."
"The most valuable feature is the UEM capabilities."
"The biggest benefits of Intune are the ability to push changes and the added security. When we moved forward with Defender, we onboarded all those machines automatically. That helps dramatically. For a while, we were left with machines that weren't protected. We could see where people had done things they shouldn't have done, and Defender saved our skins a few times. It didn't happen a lot, but it happened enough that it made us glad we made that decision."
"I would say the biggest benefit is the single-pane view. There's no jumping around multiple UI's to do your overall management."
"The most important thing for me is the autopilot feature."
"The ability to wipe data from and reset devices is one of the most important and valuable features. If a device is reported stolen, we can freeze it or wipe the data from it, preventing data leakage."
"One of the best features is Windows Autopilot because if you change any of your devices, whatever security policies and compliance policies that applied can be easily migrated to the new devices. Windows Autopilot gives you that flexibility."
"The most valuable features are the ones that make sure that the deployment is of a standard operating system and the Zero Touch deployment, which is very useful. This allows users to have an out of box experience."
"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."
"You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations."
"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."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"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."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to see which virtual machines need more resources or are over-committed."
"The technical support services are good."
"This is the best solution for management for the server administrator. VMware has been on the market for many years, so they have a lot of solutions. For on-premises, VMware is the best available solution."
"I appreciate it because it's very easy to set up and configure new disks and servers."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the ability to manage all of our environments allowing us to have better functionality and high availability."
"The market share of VMware is huge. It is not even necessary to prove the capabilities attached to the product."
"The solution is very easy to manage."
"The interface is very user-friendly and the solution is simple to use."
"Due to the abundance of features, there's a lot to organize, which makes managing and setting up the solution challenging. The setup is immense, and it would be good to see improvement in this area."
"I think that there is room for improvement with the reporting. If this is done, it will be a better product."
"From a new user's perspective, it may be a little overwhelming because there are quite a few things to look at in the console, however, once you are sort of acclimated and are familiar with your core functions, it's fairly simple and straightforward."
"Its configuration is fairly complicated. You have to do quite a bit of discovery to be able to deploy it for a customer. You have to ask them a lot of questions. So, its initial deployment is the biggest challenge. They should make it easier to deploy with the use of Wizards or something else. During the deployment stage, there could be profiles for the customers who are particularly wanting to use certain feature sets of Intune."
"Areas for improvement in Intune include expanding support beyond Samsung devices to accommodate other Android manufacturers like Redmi and Motorola."
"It needs certificate provisioning for S/MIME purposes."
"I would like to see easier pushdowns. Currently, we have to package our own software and then push it. Intune can make that way easier and integrate applications, such as Zoom and Adobe Acrobat, that are used by a lot of enterprise or corporate organizations."
"A new Intune feature allows application packaging, but it incurs additional licensing costs for a significant number of applications."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"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."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"When vCenter is in a Microsoft environment, there is a lot of licensing involved, where we face some difficulties."
"I think the logging side should be improved because it's pretty difficult to keep up to date VMware and with vCenter."
"There is room for improvement in operating and managing cluster environments and maintenance. And hardware environment visibility."
"There are some complexities within the system center. For example, we use two different applications for updates and the deployment of the machine. We also have another third party solution."
"The cost of this solution should be improved."
"I would like there to be support for this solution in Iran."
"The solution's pricing is very high and could be improved."
"It can take a long time for the first information to become available. On the other hand, that's normal. It has to collect a lot of information before it can predict future needs. But it would be nice if there was some kind of base level to get started."
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Chef is ranked 15th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while vCenter Configuration Manager is ranked 10th in Configuration Management with 50 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while vCenter Configuration Manager is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of vCenter Configuration Manager writes "A solution with a range of functionalities and several pricing plans that suit your needs". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and BigFix, whereas vCenter Configuration Manager is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, Red Hat Satellite and BigFix. See our Chef vs. vCenter Configuration Manager report.
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