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

Chef vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 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
7.2
Number of Reviews
210
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
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (16th), Release Automation (7th)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 11.8%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 1.2%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 16.6%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Chandola - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 22, 2022
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.
Arun S . - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 14, 2023
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.
VivekSaini - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 31, 2024
A highly stable solution that provides good automation and patching
We use the solution for Linux patching automation. Currently, we are using the solution for patching normal configuration-related work. However, we also plan to use it for the provisioning of the servers The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching. The solution is…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is fully integrated with the Microsoft platform and the Autopilot feature, which is a unique feature."
"It has a useful device management feature."
"Agile and easy to deploy MDM solution that covers the maximum number of policies. Stable, scalable, and with knowledgeable technical support."
"The security-related tools are excellent; these features allow us to secure devices, lock them down, and ensure compliance."
"I would rate the stability of Microsoft Intune nine out of ten."
"The overall user experience is quite nice. I have no complaints from end users regarding their devices enrolled in Intune."
"Intune significantly simplifies application deployment, mobile application management, and policy enforcement, such as restricting user access to specific applications, thereby enhancing overall environment security."
"The stability is good."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"It has been very easy to tie it into our build and deploy automation for production release work, etc. All the Chef pieces more or less run themselves."
"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."
"When you have an enterprise-level number of network devices, the ability to quickly push out security updates to thousands of devices is the biggest thing"
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The solution can scale."
"It does not require staff for deployment and maintenance. It just works."
"It has made our infrastructure more testable. We are able to build our infrastructure in CI, then are more confident in what we are deploying will work, not breaking everything."
"Being a game-changer in configuration management software is what has made Ansible so popular and widespread. Much of IT is based on SSH direct connectivity with a need for running infrastructure in an agentless way, and that has been a big plus. SSH has become a great security standard for managing servers. The whole thing has really become an out-of-the-box solution for managing a Unix estate."
"The most valuable feature is that Ansible is agentless."
"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."
 

Cons

"No option to do end-to-en macOS management. Slow implementation of policies."
"Intune lags all of its competitors in terms of report generation."
"The interoperability or communication with a different platform can be better. It is a two-way street. It is not only about Microsoft. The other platforms also have to be willing to share some information, but that absolutely can be improved."
"The biggest problem we ever have is when something goes out of date after 30 days when nobody has logged into it. We do have a problem trying to get those back online. We've been working with Microsoft to resolve that problem, but that's been the only issue that we've had in the last few years."
"The difficulty of the the roll out is surprisingly difficult considering this product is supposed to be an integrated part of the 365 suite."
"The mobile and tablet-based versions need improvement because they are not completely user-friendly, compared to the web version. Also, data synchronization with our existing asset manager, the synchronization between multiple assets and multiple devices, takes a lot of time due to the security scanning. It should be reduced."
"In terms of what can be improved, I am looking for better enhancements regarding Apple management, not only on the mobile device, but also on the laptop."
"A new Intune feature allows application packaging, but it incurs additional licensing costs for a significant number of applications."
"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."
"It is an old technology."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"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."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"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."
"We would like support for the post-integration of this product before cloud frameworks because right now their approach is to avoid using on-premises activities and move everything to the cloud."
"Because Ansible is establishing SSH sessions to perform tasks, there is a limit on scalability."
"The scalability of the solution has some shortcomings."
"There could be more stuff in the workflows. I hope that if I have ten templates with different services on it, workflow could auto-populate all the template-based services."
"What I'm trying to figure out, personally, is, when doing mass updates, how I can parallelize that a little bit better. It seems right now - and maybe, it's a shortcoming on my end - that I run through one set of servers, and then another set of servers, ad then another set of servers, but it seems like I could throw a lot of these checks out. Different types of servers, like web servers and DB servers, if I could parallelize that a little bit to make everything run a little bit more efficiently, that would help."
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""
"Some of the Cisco modules could be expanded, which would be great, along with not having to do so much coding in the background to make it work."
"Ansible is great, but there are not many modules. You can do about 80% to 90% of things by using commands, but more modules should be added. We cannot do some of the things in Ansible. In Red Hat, we have the YUM package manager, and there are certain options that we can pass through YUM. To install the Docker Community Edition, I'll write the yum install docker-ce command, but because the Docker Community Edition is not compatible with RHEL 8, I will have to use the nobest option, such as yum install docker-ce --nobest. The nobest option installs the most stable version that can be installed on a particular system. In Ansible, the nobest option is not there. So, it needs some improvements in terms of options. There should be more options, keywords, and modules."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing model is not complex, but it is very expensive compared to other solutions. They can bring more models and reduce the pricing. They should allow customers to select the features they want and price it accordingly."
"While I can't provide insights from a business perspective, it's worth noting that the pricing may differ significantly, and the discount we received might not be reflective of standard business rates."
"We don't pay for Intune because it is bundled with the premium subscription to Office 365. It includes Intune and Defender. I don't have to buy two extra products to manage my enterprise."
"While Microsoft charges for actual usage, it lacks discount options."
"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."
"Microsoft Intune is not cost-effective as a standalone product."
"The product is offered as part of a Microsoft standard bundle. The pricing can be competitive to Airwatch, and Maas360."
"It is cheap, but as compared to Google, it is costly. Google is cheaper, but quality-wise, Microsoft Intune is better."
"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."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
"The pricing for us is huge because we use twenty thousand nodes, so that is a huge infrastructure, but if someone is using a small infrastructure, then the pricing is not so much."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"Like many Red Hat products, they have a no-cost version of the web application (AWX, formerly Ansible Tower), but you are on your own to install and it is a little more complicated than just installing Ansible."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user185772 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 27, 2015
Docker v. CFEngine v. Puppet Data Center Automation v. Chef v. Ansible
Originally posted at http://technologyconversations.com/2015/08/26/configuration-management-in-the-docker-world/ Anyone managing more than a few servers can confirm that doing such a task manually is a waste of time and risky. Configuration management (CM) exists for a long time and there is no…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
30%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
 

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...
What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...
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 ...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
No data available
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.