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Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] vs Chef comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Automic Continuous Delivery...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Chef
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (20th), Release Automation (12th), Configuration Management (18th)
 

Featured Reviews

MJ
The main benefit is you can deploy everything with it, but everybody has to need to use this tool in the organization
The main benefit is you can deploy everything with it, but everybody has to need to use this tool in the organization. If some organizations have their own tool, it is hard to make it clear that ARA would be better if everyone used it, because it provides a benefit when you can monitor all the users.
Aaron  P - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation
In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Self-service for developers, because they are able to deploy to development departments on their own, without needing people from operations."
"Gives people insight into what's happening during the deployment."
"It provides a wonderful user interface which is easy to use."
"It is an umbrella system that allows us to integrate many different systems into our heterogeneous environment."
"We have saved on our time costs and have seen more quality."
"The metrics gathered after deployment, for example, the rate of success versus the rate of failure."
"The capability to provide visibility to the stakeholders, to management, is the biggest piece that showcases what the solution is about."
"Deployment workflow (WF) can be designed this way, so that it is not necessary to provide all applications (systems) artifacts of which an application consists."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"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 recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"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."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
 

Cons

"There is an issue with the stability in the tool. The process of agent will stop, then the monitoring agent can't be recognized because the process is running, but you can talk with the system."
"If you have a technical problem and need development of the tool, the support team is terrible, because they cannot help with the technical details."
"The stability of the solution can be improved."
"There needs to be better error handling and error descriptions. It should be more clear what the errors are and what we can do to fix them."
"It would be very beneficial for us to see integrations into cloud environments, especially into the Google Cloud environment because we are heading towards cloud."
"Not a perfect ten because the user interface is brand new and it needs improvement."
"We hope that we can integrate the new CD Directive into our portfolio, so we can bring the deployment and release management closer together."
"The dashboard should allow you to see the current state of packages in each environment, not only on an individual application basis, but across the entire application platform."
"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."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"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."
"It is an old technology."
"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."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We increased our quality and reduced our time costs."
"Customers often complain about the price."
"I can save time and money more quickly."
"If you have a fixed contract, it has limits to spreading out. If you have a flexible enterprise license contract, then you have a lot of scalability for this tool."
"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."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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 or docker images.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

CA Continuous Delivery Automation, Automic Release Automation, Automic ONE Automation, UC4 Automation Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BET365, Charter Communications, TASC
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
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