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
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
233
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
7.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (17th), Release Automation (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 12.0%, up from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC TrueSight Server Automation is 3.1%, 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

Gaurav Chandola - PeerSpot reviewer
We can manage all aspects of our devices from a single console, easy to scale, and quick to deploy
Intune has many benefits from the Microsoft perspective. This solution can manage Windows 10 devices, app management, and provide security solutions. We don't need to worry about our network connection, and we'll be more secure with regular security patches and compliance. Since everything will be deployed through the internet and users will log in using the internet only, the risks have been mitigated. Security updates, security patching, and the application will be targeted from Intune. The location tracker will be available to track where the device is and the user's location. The user will be restricted from accessing certain applications using compliance policies. Conditional access policies will be based on the reason why the user needs access to the application. Microsoft Intune is one of the best products in the industry for managing Windows devices. The solution has more feature restrictions. The conditional access policies also eliminate the dependency on the on-prem network for the devices. The solution also manages our security settings and a lot of other beneficial features such as Microsoft Purview which gives us the compliance portion. We can manage all aspects of our device from a single console, including M365 services. This allows us to configure data classification types, such as public, private, internal, confidential, and highly confidential.
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 find Microsoft Intune valuable primarily for its Windows management capabilities, along with its Android Enterprise and Apple device management for mobile devices."
"I like the group policy management feature, which performs application monitoring and device enrollment."
"It works well if you have a Microsoft environment."
"Conditional access has helped us tailor and enforce our security policies in the mobile space."
"Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow."
"Intune saves time, and it is very easy to use. It allows us to manage applications completely."
"Its protection policies are most valuable. It protects mobile devices as well as individual apps. It is pretty scalable, and its documentation is also pretty good. It is also pretty straightforward to deploy."
"Microsoft Endpoint Manager is not expensive overall, especially for small environments."
"The product's valuable feature is its ability to conduct patching for multiple servers simultaneously."
"Can standardize patching and deployments across affiliates."
"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."
"The best feature of the solution is patch automation."
"You can easily get the patching link. Patches can be deployed easily with a single click, making deployment straightforward. This eliminates the need for constant monitoring. You can deploy the necessary patches with one click, ensuring everything is signed correctly, and all issues are resolved."
"As this solution provides strong support and has multiple use cases, it is worth the cost."
"The ability to script and create BL packages to perform various functions. This makes automating our environment relatively easy to do."
"Server Automation's best feature is automated patching. It also helps us automate compliance and report generation. We can even integrate TrueSight Server Automation with a vulnerability management solution to remedy vulnerabilities by applying patches, deploying scripts, or changing registry entries."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"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 is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"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."
"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."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"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

"The reporting is subpar. That's the only issue we have with Intune. We use another solution for that purpose."
"Possibly, in future releases, it could be more enhanced."
"Intune could be improved by expanding its third-party patching capabilities for a more comprehensive solution."
"It would be better if I could integrate it with my core group policy. I would like to have a group policy in my current environment, which has strict control, but those things are still missing. Although it has maximum compliance and security, it's not available on-premise."
"China blocks Google and Google Play Store, which makes installation challenging. Microsoft Intune is a company software, which has to be installed to the app portal or Microsoft Software Center."
"They need to integrate more with security options."
"There can be more logs. I do not have any other requirements."
"There are challenges with Intune, specifically in reporting. Many third-party companies offer single-pane-of-glass reporting that shows you what your update environment looks like, how your patch is doing, application status, etc., but Intune's reporting is not intuitive. You can connect to Azure, monitoring, and the workbooks, but it's not streamlined."
"I would like to see more container integration in the next release of this solution."
"There is no option to see all the servers we patch and we cannot find what the server status is. Of course, we can what has been completed and what is pending and which servers have failed, but we cannot find server status from the BMC tool. For example, is the RDP up or not. We are using separate scripts for that."
"I would like to see a better methodology for handling REST calls and integration into the APIs. They add new APIs as they add functions, but they've missed some from older components which they still haven't added in. Some of the APIs are there but the CLI calls are not there."
"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."
"A better CLI Database cleanup tool would help us with our regular maintenance of BladeLogic Server Automation."
"We've had to increase RAM and CPU processing in order to alleviate some of the sluggishness during patching."
"More use cases can be automated. The user interface of BMC TrueSight Server Automation could benefit from enhancements, as it currently lacks refinement."
"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 agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."
"It is an old technology."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Intune is cost-effective as it is included in some of the Office 365 packages."
"Based on the features that it gives, it is cost-efficient. It is not necessarily on the expensive side of the scale. It provides a hefty number of features that any organization would want. It is in a good price range."
"It's affordable. It's cheaper if you have an Office 365, E5, or E3 subscription because everything is there."
"I liked the tool's pricing until P2 came into effect. I am unsure about the current value versus the cost of the new licensing model."
"We work in the charity sector, so a lot of our clients get Microsoft Premium licenses or Business Premium for free. They get ten licenses free, and a lot of our clients do not have more than ten staff members. They are getting the tool for free, so its cost is not an issue."
"It is not a cheap solution. The price for a device when you start using it at a large scale can be improved. It is covered under our enterprise agreement. We pay once a year. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"They have categorized the licenses according to the size of the business. So, if it's a smaller organization, we can choose the license accordingly. If it's a big organization, then we can choose accordingly. Everything is clearly mentioned, and we can decide. It's suitable for all kinds of infrastructure, and that's very goo"
"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."
"The solution is quite expensive compared to other vendors."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"We're looking at less than $100,000 USD for this solution."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
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: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.