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Chef vs Digital.ai Deploy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Chef
Ranking in Release Automation
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (17th), Configuration Management (17th)
Digital.ai Deploy
Ranking in Release Automation
13th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Digital.ai Deploy is 0.6%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Dorian Sezen - PeerSpot reviewer
Good solution for heterogeneous enterprise environments that have different workflows
The solution is for heterogeneous enterprise environments that have different workflows like Kubernetes, Linux, Windows, and mainframe The solution creates a manifest file that caps the bridge between the developer and the system admin. The tool needs to improve on cloud-native GitOps. I have…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"This product is an innovative market leader in the field of application deployment."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is vendor-agnostic and it has a file called Manifest, which makes it possible for developers, ops people, and system admins to cooperate."
"The solution creates a manifest file that caps the bridge between the developer and the system admin."
 

Cons

"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."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"It is an old technology."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution currently has a bug that causes performance issues. They need to resolve this in a future release."
"While it is a flexible product and provides a means of integrating with virtually anything, the company should make a better effort to keep up with new platform integrations."
"The tool needs to improve on cloud-native GitOps."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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 using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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."
"The product’s pricing is acceptable. We get volume discounts."
"Pricing costs are based on annual subscriptions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
40%
Computer Software Company
16%
Insurance Company
11%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about Digital.ai Deploy?
The solution creates a manifest file that caps the bridge between the developer and the system admin.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Digital.ai Deploy?
The product’s pricing is acceptable. We get volume discounts.
What needs improvement with Digital.ai Deploy?
The tool needs to improve on cloud-native GitOps.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Deployit, XLDeploy, XebiaLabs XL Deploy
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
American Express, Xerox, Fandango, Rabobank, Cable & Wireless, Air France, 3M, GE, Liberty Mutual, EA
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Digital.ai Deploy and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.