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BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs Chef comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
BMC TrueSight Server Automa...
Ranking in Configuration Management
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Chef
Ranking in Configuration Management
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (17th), Release Automation (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 11.9%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC TrueSight Server Automation is 3.0%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
Everything has worked better since we started using it
Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.
JonathanShilling - PeerSpot reviewer
Able to access server info and file systems directly through TSSA but system can be sluggish
Resource management on the base servers could be improved. We're using a site that's supposed to cover all of our affiliates. I don't know what is causing the problem but we've had to increase RAM and CPU processing in order to alleviate some of the sluggishness during patching. I find the solution to be rather cumbersome. It's supposed to be able to support 50,000 or 100,000 servers. We only have 5,000 servers and during our patch processes, it gets very sluggish. We wanted to automate our patching, and not be stuck monitoring patches for three-quarters of every month. We have a main site and then multiple repeaters at each of the affiliate locations. Theoretically, patches are supposed to be delivered to the repeaters and your affiliates are supposed to pull the patches from those repeaters. We've noticed that doesn't always work and it pulls transfer patches from the main site rather than going to the repeater. TrueSight brought some standardization across the affiliates, however, it has also increased workloads and has made some things more complex. The requirement to have a local account with no password (password is random in TSSA, but not able to be changed through Windows) has caused some grief with our security team, and many complaints across affiliates. There are several features that appear to be very good but they don't always work as expected.
Arun S . - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"I like Intune's ability to install software to a device remotely and push policy through the Azure portal."
"The policy and compliance monitoring of devices and the software deployment are most valuable."
"Autopilot is the most valuable feature."
"The stability is good."
"It's really easy to access."
"The most valuable feature of Intune is the user-friendly portal for end users."
"The most valuable feature is Intune's ability to push out updates for the security and antivirus. I also like Intune's copilot and the ability to automate processes. For example, if you have 5,000 employees who are issued new PCs and you need to set them up with everything they need."
"The automatic patch management feature in the Intune Suite is helpful."
"BMC support is great. They usually can answer any of our questions in a short amount of time and solve our most complex issues."
"Among the most valuable features is its flexibility and ability to work across multiple operating systems. Being able to execute some form of data collection and not have to worry about whether I'm working on a Linux box, or a Windows box, or the underlying OS, I can do these collections, get these results, and put them together in a uniform format which makes it easier to present back to management."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to remediate quickly and efficiently across a number of IT assets at the same time. It takes away manual efforts from the team to go out and fix those vulnerabilities through patching, conflict updates, etc."
"Scalability is good."
"The product's valuable feature is its ability to conduct patching for multiple servers simultaneously."
"The ability to script and create BL packages to perform various functions. This makes automating our environment relatively easy to do."
"The solution is stable."
"BladeLogic lets users view the filesystem with minimal authorization to the server."
"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."
"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 most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
 

Cons

"There are a lot of updates happening on Microsoft."
"Its integration with Mac and Linux devices can be better. They should provide more features similar to Windows. We should be able to manage policies within Linux and Mac machines. If we can have more granular controls for these two operating systems, it will be really helpful."
"There should be more support for macOS. Even though macOS is supported by Intune and Microsoft is working very hard to get more features into Intune to manage macOS, that's one thing they can give a lot more attention to."
"They should make it easier to order it, however, that's generally true for everything from Microsoft."
"In future releases, I would like to see better integration with Apple products."
"Historically, Group Policy has simplified the management of various items, such as printer and drive mappings and while Intune offers workarounds, it lacks native support for these functionalities. This is an area I believe needs improvement."
"Cost is the biggest factor for us right now. Microsoft Intune and AD P1 together in a bundle is a good thing to have, but it is very costly compared to other products in the market. Otherwise, Microsoft Intune is the best."
"I would like to see better integration with Microsoft. There are a few things I can still do with Jamf that I am unable to do with Intune yet."
"There is no other functionality available to patch the containers that we need to include."
"Provisioning needs to be more user-friendly. We were using BladeLogic for provisioning, but due to a lot of issues and complications, we had to stop using provisioning with this tool."
"The setup of this suite is very complicated. It needs to be simplified."
"Resource management on the base servers is sluggish and could be improved."
"The number of APIs available within the tool needs improvement. At the moment, we have a couple of different scanning tools used within the organization, but only one of those is integrated back into Server Automation. There is another tool that they use in another part of the business where it doesn't have an out-of-the-box adaptor for it. We would have to go and create or develop something bespoke to be able to integrate it with that scanning tool. Whereas, with the other scanning tool, there was an API available. To make it easier, I would like to have more APIs available for different scanning tools within that line of business."
"Another area for improvement is group scheduling if I'm trying to do all the servers. For example, if I want to do all the 2012 Servers - since the patches are the same for all of them - I can't do so."
"Without any knowledge of the product, we used the KB articles to start working. As a result, we definitely did not have full knowledge of BMC BladeLogic... They need to provide a minimum of knowledge with training on YouTube or somewhere else."
"The architecture is big, so the initial setup is not a straightforward task."
"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."
"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"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."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For organizations that are a Microsoft shop, the pricing is compelling."
"It comes as a bundle, so you do not really know what the prices are. Microsoft does not break it down to the user cost for us. It is just bundled with our E5 license."
"Microsoft offers some licensing where it's included at no extra cost when customers are already using the licenses. In such a case, it's a really good value. If you have to buy the licensing for it, it's probably on par with other solutions. It isn't substantially more or less expensive. The great thing is that it is included in some of Microsoft's licensed packages. So, some customers don't have to spend additional money for it. Typically, most providers that support Intune do charge a management fee of some sort or some fee. Certainly, we're no exception."
"The pricing for Microsoft Intune is reasonable. Our clients are satisfied."
"Every customer used to purchase licenses based on their needs."
"If you're subscribing to Premium or E3, there are no additional costs for Intune, it's included."
"Microsoft Intune is expensive."
"I would rate the price a four out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"We're looking at less than $100,000 USD for this solution."
"The solution is quite expensive compared to other vendors."
"The product is expensive."
"The product's pricing depends on the number of servers."
"Licensing is a bit pricey. Be mindful about the components that you need and buy as appropriate."
"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 able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
33%
Computer Software Company
10%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

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 BMC TrueSight Server Automation?
The product's valuable feature is its ability to conduct patching for multiple servers simultaneously.
What needs improvement with BMC TrueSight Server Automation?
More use cases can be automated. The user interface of BMC TrueSight Server Automation could benefit from enhancement...
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
TrueSight Server Automation, BladeLogic Server Automation, BladeLogic Automation Suite
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
State of Michigan, Fujitsu FSAS, Transamerica Life Insurance Company, SAP
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.