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Chef vs Microsoft Configuration Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 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
236
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
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)
Microsoft Configuration Man...
Ranking in Configuration Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (3rd), Patch Management (1st)
 

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 Chef is 1.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 13.2%, down from 14.5% 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.
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.
MikeNelson2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements
While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Intune has significantly benefited our organization by providing comprehensive visibility into our device ecosystem."
"There are so many features, but Windows Autopilot is one of the features that are very valuable for most customers."
"It works pretty well for us."
"We have found the solution is capable of scaling."
"The solution is easy to use and it has good performance."
"We work completely in a Microsoft environment. Its interface is similar to other Microsoft solutions that we are using such as Microsoft Defender. So far, for our administrators, it is easy to use."
"The best part of Intune is application deployment. We can deploy an application to several users with a single click. We can use conditional access, granting access to users based on certain conditions, such as location, platform, etc."
"I can see that the patch management process is much improved with the bundled patch management option available in Microsoft Intune compared to the KPI deployment required by the other deployment solutions."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"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 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 solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"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."
"With the right administrator, application deployment can do wonders."
"We're a Microsoft-centric organization, so we are happy with the integration between products."
"The cloud account management is a valuable feature."
"It uses detailed descriptions of the workstations, and that is good for me."
"The solution is highly scalable."
"It is a good choice for deployment that performs very well."
"SCCM does everything from A to Z for a Windows operating system."
"Endpoint Manager is valuable to our organization because it allows us to connect to our enterprise from remote locations securely. The most useful feature is its robustness and scalability. It is highly scalable and flexible, allowing us to use it in various environments. Additionally, we can specialize the policies related to each device group. This ensures that each group has access to the applications they need for their work and non-work hours."
 

Cons

"There are a lot of updates happening on Microsoft."
"We need the capabilities of the Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) to be enhanced through Intune instead of Azure."
"I have a lot of Apple products in my environment. It would be nice to have an improved integration of Apple products with Microsoft Intune without Jam."
"Manually syncing devices to enforce policies is cumbersome."
"The solution could improve its flexibility."
"Intune does not provide real-time visibility."
"For an existing customer who has an SCCM, it would need to be upgraded to an MECM first before I can introduce Microsoft Intune."
"Sometimes, it takes time to synchronize the policies between the portal and the devices, you don't have a way to estimate how long it will take to deploy. You have some kind of gray area, where it can deploy in 30 minutes or three days."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"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 agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"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."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"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."
"The setup was complex and I faced a lot of problems initially because I was new to the solution."
"We'd like the solution to make it easier to manage remote users."
"As far as load balancing across, they don't have that support yet, so that you can actually build multiple primaries and have it load balance across. They don't have any of that functionality yet. That would be a nice feature, to scale that way."
"The TSM component could be improved."
"Its client interface should be more accessible, and the notifications should be more customizable from the console. It should be more user friendly and have some kind of customized notifications so that we can use it on the client side. These are the reasons why we restricted its use only for the server environment and didn't use it on the client side."
"Not everything is readily available, and there are a lot of commands that are only executable via PowerShell."
"With Microsoft Premier Support, you get what you pay for. There's Third Tier Support that you pay for. If you pay for that, you get excellent support, and if you don't pay for that, then you get the less experienced staff."
"The database should be made to be more stable and robust, but not so much the configuration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am satisfied with the pricing."
"Microsoft Intune has been incorporated into our Microsoft E5 licenses."
"It is average. Some of the costs are quite high depending on what the customer currently uses, but overall, it is not bad. I would not say that I would not recommend Intune based on the cost. I definitely would, but they can definitely improve on the cost. So overall, its cost is not bad."
"The clients pay for a license and each can have a different type of license, such as an E3 or E5."
"With our standard E5 agreement with Microsoft, there have been no pricing concerns. Introductory professional services, like a fast-track service, were included with our E5 membership, and there have been no additional costs."
"If you're subscribing to Premium or E3, there are no additional costs for Intune, it's included."
"It is expensive. The cost depends on the license that we choose."
"It is reasonable. When you have Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license, it is already licensed in that license. So, you could say it is free."
"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."
"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."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing is good because they have various options, depending on what you are looking for."
"I would rate the cost as eight out of ten."
"The solution is expensive. Microsoft Configuration Manager would likely be considered high-priced for small businesses because they may not fully utilize all of its features and capabilities."
"The price model is different for every client."
"Pricing is negotiable with Microsoft, depending upon which of their packages you choose."
"The solution operates on a licensing model that can be expensive."
"As far as I know, it is an annual operating expense license."
"When you compare this solution with other tools in the market you might actually find a lot of variation in the pricing and that's why people opt for the other tools rather than Microsoft tools."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 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...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...
How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. Wh...
What do you like most about SCCM?
One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages effi...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
No data available
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.