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Chef vs UrbanCode Deploy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Chef
Ranking in Release Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (16th), Configuration Management (17th)
UrbanCode Deploy
Ranking in Release Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 0.8%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UrbanCode Deploy is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
CT
Nov 7, 2022
A handy interface that includes buttons or drag-and-drop options for all functionality
Our company uses the solution for standard, blue-green, and complex deployments. We have 250 users throughout our company.  The solution handles complex deployments very efficiently.  The user interface includes buttons or drag-and-drop options for all functionality. It is easy to create component…

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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"The most valuable feature is the snapshot functionality, which allows us to access previous versions of the artifacts."
"It is very easy to make a software release. It used to take us at least a couple of hours to make a release, now we went to production with a new one last night. This new release took me five minutes."
"The most valuable functionality is the ability to define the deployment process, schedule the deployment and automatically execute the deployments to different environments."
"Stable solution that's good for automating the CI/CD pipeline: from development to production."
"The solution handles complex deployments very efficiently."
"The stability is good. I haven't experienced any issues."
 

Cons

"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"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 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."
"It is an old technology."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"I certainly would like to have a better way to pass information between deployment steps using UrbanCode Deploy because that's really difficult to do."
"I would like to see more reporting for container architecture."
"The technical support of the solution could definitely be improved as PMRs take long to resolve."
"The scalability of this application needs improvement. Changes and variations in the application become bottlenecks as they need to be more seamless and comfortable."
"I would like to have the agent up and running at all times, as opposed to only while it is in the DevOps pipeline."
"The interface allows access in a number of ways but that can be confusing."
 

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."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Considering COVID-19, the price is too high."
"The cost of the solution is high but it offers great ROI."
"The licensing fees for this solution are based on the number of servers that are being deployed and the number of agents that you have."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
65%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
3%
 

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 UrbanCode Deploy?
The solution handles complex deployments very efficiently.
What needs improvement with UrbanCode Deploy?
The interface allows access in a number of ways but that can be confusing. For example, driving to your home from the office is easy when there are one or two routes. With twenty routes, there is s...
What is your primary use case for UrbanCode Deploy?
Our company uses the solution for standard, blue-green, and complex deployments. We have 250 users throughout our company.
 

Also Known As

No data available
uDeploy
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
As policy, IBM does not release customer names on non-IBM web sites.  However, public DevOps and UrbanCode Deploy case studies can be found here. IBM's UrbanCode Deploy customers span Small-Medium Businesses to Fortune 500 companies across all industries worldwide.
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. UrbanCode Deploy and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.