AWS CloudFormation vs Chef comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
166
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (4th), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
AWS CloudFormation
Ranking in Configuration Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Chef
Ranking in Configuration Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (15th), Release Automation (15th)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Configuration Management category, the market share of Microsoft Intune is 12.3% and it increased by 23.1% compared to the previous year. The market share of AWS CloudFormation is 0.8% and it decreased by 52.7% compared to the previous year. The market share of Chef is 1.2% and it decreased by 24.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
Unique Categories:
Remote Access
4.5%
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)
35.8%
No other categories found
Build Automation
0.1%
Release Automation
1.0%
 

Featured Reviews

ZW
Apr 1, 2024
Simplifies operations, but the UI needs improvement
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. If they can integrate all the applications in their Intune system and allow all the IT admin to see any vulnerability upgrades or any feature upgrades required, that would be great. Currently, we do not have this kind of information proactively showing up in the admin dashboard. The UI is very difficult to navigate around. You have to click multiple times. For example, you have to click four or five times to get to the BitLocker key. If something is missing or something is not installed properly, you get the same error every time. Behind the error message, there is a lot of meaning to it. The user interface and the way Intune shows the errors for troubleshooting do not make it very useful for me. We can only get a glimpse of the error, but you have to figure out the rest of the things on your own. You have to go to Google, or you have to go to GitHub or another forum to find any related information.
Udhay Prakash Pethakamsetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 23, 2024
Provides flexibility and helps track changes, but there is less support for on-premise environments
Versioning makes our work easy. Everything has a version. If we use a specific version, we can use the features available for that particular version. It is really helpful. We can write it in JSON or YAML. It gives us a lot of flexibility. We can model and provision the third-party resources in the CloudFormation registry. We can also publish them to the AWS Partner Network. We can also work with the SAM templates. It is the most important thing I use when I work with Lambda functions. I can build the serverless application faster with the SAM templates. It’s an open-source framework. We also have a template builder. It is a command line tool. We can generate the templates. We can perform drag-and-drop actions on the builder. We can also create codes automatically.
Aaron  P - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 18, 2023
Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation
Chef is like a master chef in a kitchen for computer systems. It's used to create recipes (cookbooks) that specify how servers and apps should be set up. Chef then makes sure these instructions are followed the same way on all computers in a network. The ChefServer is like the recipe book, where…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"With on-premises Active Directory, the main challenge was that we had no control when a user was working from home. We didn't know what exactly a user was doing and whether the AV was up to date or not. Intune provides better control of their machines."
"The most important thing for me is the autopilot feature."
"I like the fact that it's integrated with the rest of the Microsoft products, so customers can manage it from their Office 365 portal or Azure portal."
"I like the tool's integration with Apple. Anyone who creates an ID in Intune will get an Apple ID."
"I like the group policy management feature, which performs application monitoring and device enrollment."
"Internet-based access with security is what I have found to be most valuable. It is also a stable and scalable solution."
"Remote Wipe and Autopilot is one of the best features."
"The most valuable features in Microsoft Intune for me are application deployment, Defender deployment, and asset management."
"Since AWS CloudFormation integrates well with the AWS platform, it facilitates faster deployment. Building templates for AWS services within the solution is also straightforward, making the process easier."
"What I found most valuable in AWS CloudFormation is its configurability. The solution is easy to configure. I also like its change management configuration because that's also good."
"CloudFormation gives us control of AWS and any Cloud infrastructure. It creates the whole stack for Cloud services technologies so it's easy to manage the whole system."
"Its ability to treat infrastructure's code is valuable. It makes things automatable and reproducible."
"I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. We use it every day."
"With CloudFormation, there is no need to use complicated coding."
"I appreciate the flexibility of infrastructure as code. With CloudFormation, we can define ground rules, control usage limits, and scale our infrastructure up or down programmatically. Having this level of control through code on infra is a major benefit. That's the beauty of CloudFormation."
"The most valuable features of AWS CloudFormation are all the resources documentation is located in one location, simple resource reverting, and ease of use of the full package for new users."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"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."
"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"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 most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Intune has a latency response time issue. The latency has room for improvement."
"Could benefit from user having more control over devices."
"There are a couple of issues with stability."
"The UI also needs improvements because it is complex for end-users. We have had feedback from a few users in our organization who found the UI is not feasible for tracking and analyzing all the processes and monitoring all the devices."
"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."
"More integration with monitoring tools is needed."
"The solution could be improved by the opportunity to connect third-party application databases, such as Chocolatey or another setup store, to Intune."
"Lacking ability to leverage more iOS device management internally."
"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."
"As soon as they manage to parametrize the whole thing and to implement parameters at all levels, it will become automatically a lot more flexible."
"Including certain examples of templates would be advantageous."
"There could be better error handling. It would be a good way to improve the solution."
"The code we write in AWS CloudFormation is pretty big compared to Terraform. We need to have more modules in the solution. A library should also be there where we can save code lines. A dashboard feature would be good for designers."
"AWS CloudFormation allows you to use the code templates written in JSON and YAML, but not directly in Python. Adding this feature would be beneficial."
"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."
"Provisioning a large environment or a large number of services takes a bit more time than with Terraform."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"There appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"It is an old technology."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"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."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license needed to use the solution and we are on an annual license."
"I would rate the price a four out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"Intune comes with the licensing that is common for large organizations. However, Microsoft has recently released many add-ons that are very expensive, especially for large organizations or corporations."
"The product is offered as part of a Microsoft standard bundle. The pricing can be competitive to Airwatch, and Maas360."
"Intune is cost-effective as it is included in some of the Office 365 packages."
"I have no comment on pricing of the solution."
"We don't get Intune as a separate module. Most of the time, we use it within an enterprise agreement like E3 or E5. Those licenses are at a good price, but what is annoying is that every single year they go higher."
"It's affordable for the protection it gives. There are no additional costs."
"The solution's cost is normal, neither cheap nor expensive."
"The product is free."
"AWS CloudFormation's pricing is cheaper than that of other cloud providers."
"In general, pricing within AWS is relatively affordable."
"AWS CloudFormation doesn't have any cost because it's only the resources that you deploy with the solution that'll incur costs."
"This solution is free to use and does not require a license."
"The tool is free for the AWS environment."
"The pricing is not notably high."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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 using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
6%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about AWS CloudFormation?
AWS Cloud automation reduces the time needed to create AWS resources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudFormation?
AWS CloudFormation's pricing is cheaper than that of other cloud providers.
What needs improvement with AWS CloudFormation?
Manual updates are sometimes deployed, leading to errors or disruptions when attempting to modify or tear them down. ...
What do you like most about Chef?
Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.
What needs improvement with Chef?
Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
CloudFormation
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CloudFormation vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.