Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs Chef comparison

Sponsored
 

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
238
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
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (16th), Release Automation (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.1%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC TrueSight Server Automation is 2.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 1.5%, up 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 am easily able to manage devices and assets, especially laptops and desktops."
"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."
"We have one MDM that works with Windows, iOS, and Android."
"It works well if you have a Microsoft environment."
"Microsoft Intune has been a time saver and reduces the time and effort IT admins have to invest."
"It's really easy to access."
"For the price, the features included with Microsoft are appealing."
"Stable product that's easy to set up compared to other MDM products."
"Can standardize patching and deployments across affiliates."
"It gives us more speed to deliver services and applications, and we rely on security."
"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."
"BMC Bladelogic Automation can be used across many OS platforms, providing us flexibility for deployments."
"With BMC, we even configured applications, like IE or things that were Java-related. When we scheduled the jobs, it worked fine. It saved us time and there was no need for resources to monitor them."
"BladeLogic lets users view the filesystem with minimal authorization to the server."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
 

Cons

"Reporting needs to be better. Sometimes, it is way too slow, and it is not even accurate."
"They should make it easier to order it, however, that's generally true for everything from Microsoft."
"It just doesn't handle software updates well at all by itself. You need to be a scripting wizard to make those happen properly, or you use third-party tools. The Windows feature updates are very difficult to implement. I would like to see a proprietary built-in remote control tool. I know that they have Team Viewer integrated, but it is not seamless. It would be nice if they had a seamless remote desktop capability directly from the Intune console."
"I would like the ability to install the agent on devices from suppliers, which would enable us to implement a zero-trust strategy for guest devices."
"There's a significant discrepancy in Intune pricing between tenants."
"I think that there is room for improvement with the reporting. If this is done, it will be a better product."
"The solution needs to improve reporting. Sometimes, it shows double or triple entries of the same thing, which affects the count's accuracy. Also, some applications onboarded in Microsoft Intune do not get updated. When we look for solutions online, there is often no clear answer."
"I would like to see Intune improve its handling of hybrid domain joins."
"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."
"Resource management on the base servers is sluggish and could be improved."
"The setup of this suite is very complicated. It needs to be simplified."
"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."
"There is no other functionality available to patch the containers that we need to include."
"Needs more use cases into compliance management and the remediation process."
"A better CLI Database cleanup tool would help us with our regular maintenance of BladeLogic Server Automation."
"We would like to see this solution handle more multitasking."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"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."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"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."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No one can compete with Microsoft when it comes to price, and the features it is offering."
"The pricing is good because customers are not complaining about it."
"Its price is in the medium range. It is acceptable because you're paying for the features. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"Microsoft Intune is reasonably priced for large organizations that already have Microsoft Enterprise licenses, but it is less affordable for smaller businesses."
"We have a limited budget for security investments, so Microsoft should consider reducing pricing in our region. This would make investment more viable, especially since larger businesses in other countries can afford it easily."
"We work with the subscription rather than a server license. I think it's economical this way because we don't have to have a server license for that, and I think that works in our favor."
"We spend a lot of money on Intune licensing, and some of our users have to be double licensed just because of how our dev and corporate environments are segmented."
"I rate Intune five out of 10 for pricing. It's expensive."
"We're looking at less than $100,000 USD for this solution."
"Licensing is a bit pricey. Be mindful about the components that you need and buy as appropriate."
"The solution is quite expensive compared to other vendors."
"The product is expensive."
"The product's pricing depends on the number of servers."
"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."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
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
 

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.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.