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Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] vs Chef comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

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
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (16th), Release Automation (8th), Configuration Management (16th)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user779229 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 26, 2017
Reduces our time to market considerably with automated and consistent results
Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are * the size of the vendor itself * how stable the company is * how long they have been in the market * what product suites they have that can help us achieve our goal at the end of the day. We look for partners, not vendors per se, that can help us implement our vision with us, and that's why we like Automic. I give it a good nine out of 10 at this time. The one piece that I think that could help leverage more of the tool is the scripting language barrier at this time. If that's not there, and some of the pieces that could be delivered faster, it might be adopted more out there in the market. I would suggest look at the complete offering that's out there. I would suggest: Prove it out first with the use case that you have. We were not shy in terms of running some proofs of concept with a couple of big vendors out there, and then making them make the case why their product suits our use case. And don't be shy to restart if there is something that you think is not going right, make sure you fix the problem before it gets too late.
Arun S . - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 14, 2023
Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve
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. The solution is good to manage multiple large infrastructures. We can have 10 to 10,000 users using this solution and it manages them well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can support very complex environments and dependencies."
"Gives people insight into what's happening during the deployment."
"The metrics gathered after deployment, for example, the rate of success versus the rate of failure."
"The IT process automation is the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"It is an umbrella system that allows us to integrate many different systems into our heterogeneous environment."
"The event monitor is very good. You can monitor when the file is created so you can pick up the file once it's done."
"I think on a day-to-day basis, it has increased the capacity to deploy. We don't have to wait for someone to do something."
"I would say our headwind, or our time to market, is reduced considerably. We get more consistent results out of it, because you write one time and once it's automated you expect it to behave the same way every time. And it cut down a lot of re-work for us."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"At the moment, the version that we are using (version 12.0), the environment is complex with multiple installations. Therefore, the monitoring is not scalable, but this should be improved in 12.1 and 12.2."
"Not a perfect ten because the user interface is brand new and it needs improvement."
"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."
"The stability of the solution can be improved."
"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."
"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."
"GUI for mobile phones: Availability to approve and start deployment through mobile phones."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"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."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"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."
"It is an old technology."
"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

"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."
"We increased our quality and reduced our time costs."
"Customers often complain about the price."
"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."
"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."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
37%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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
 

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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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