We performed a comparison between Chef and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Release Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is very easy to use. It has a very easy interface."
"Remote Wipe and Autopilot is one of the best features."
"It's not working perfectly, but Microsoft's Autopilot offers great visibility into automated deployment solutions."
"Its security is most valuable. It gives us a way to secure devices, not only those that are steady. We do have a few tablets and other devices, and it is a way for us to secure these devices and manage them. We know they're out there and what's their status. We can manage their life cycle and verify that they're updated properly."
"The ability to push applications on devices is valuable. You do not have to manually install applications one by one. If you like to use ten different applications, you do not have to manually go and download them one by one. Intune can compile a package for you, and then you can just push them from the admin center."
"The most valuable feature is probably mobile device management. Small businesses are coming under greater scrutiny and requirements for compliance as time goes on. We don't have to worry about a VPN because we can manage these devices, control company data, and lock users out. If needed, we can remotely wipe devices and deadman-switch them."
"The ability to switch between Affinity and non-Affinity enrollment is great."
"I can reach devices or computers over the internet. I don't need to worry about the network connectivity between the offices. I can manage any device. That is the most important part."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 most valuable feature is automation."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"It has improved our organization through provisioning and security hardening. When we do get a new VM, we have been able to bring on a provisioned machine in less than a day. This morning alone, I provisioned two machines within an hour. I am talking about hardening, installing antivirus software on it, and creating user accounts because the Playbooks were predesigned. From the time we got the servers to the actual hand-off, it takes less than an hour. We are talking about having the servers actually authenticate Red Hat Satellites and run the yum updates. All of that can be done within an hour."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don’t need an agent for it to work."
"It was easy to read and learn. It is a YAML-based syntax, which makes it easily understand and pick up."
"On the network side, I already have a lot of our firewall related processes automated. If it's not automated all the way from the ticket system, our network team members, our tier-one guys in India, can just go into the Tower web interface and fill in a couple of survey questions."
"The user interface is well-built and very easy to navigate around."
"The biggest thing I liked about Ansible is the check mode so that we can verify, after we've pushed, that the config there is actually what we intended."
"The playbooks and the code the solution uses are quite useful."
"The most valuable feature of Ansible is repeatability because when you're working at the DoD, you want things to be cookie-cutter and replicable."
"They could also make it easier to use because there are some other products that may be easier to use in terms of the look and feel of the dashboard."
"Microsoft Intune could enhance its patch management for various devices, ensuring regular updates and tracking of device privileges."
"Cost is the biggest factor for us right now. Microsoft Intune and AD P1 together in a bundle is a good thing to have, but it is very costly compared to other products in the market. Otherwise, Microsoft Intune is the best."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in terms of compatibility, extending beyond the well-known major brands."
"We faced issues with macOS support. The product should have better inventory and asset management."
"I would like to see easier pushdowns. Currently, we have to package our own software and then push it. Intune can make that way easier and integrate applications, such as Zoom and Adobe Acrobat, that are used by a lot of enterprise or corporate organizations."
"I would like to see the ability to deploy custom packages as a Windows 64-bit package, as opposed to the Windows 32-bit, which is the only one available now."
"Lacking ability to leverage more iOS device management internally."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"It is an old technology."
"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."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"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."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."
"For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on."
"Improvements should be made in terms of execution speed, which is, I believe, the most lacking feature. Aside from that, re-triggering a failed task is another useful feature."
"The support could be better."
"In Community, there's a lot of effort towards testing, standardizing, and testing for module development to role development, which is why Molecule is now becoming real. Same thing with Zuul, which we are starting to implement. Zulu tests out modules from third-party sources, like ourselves, and verifies that the modules work before they are committed to the code. Currently, Ansible can't do this with all the modules out there."
"There needs to be improvement in the orchestration."
"Networking needs to be improved."
"Ansible could use more public relations and marketing."
More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →
Chef is ranked 12th in Release Automation with 18 reviews while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 3rd in Release Automation with 58 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform writes "Capable of broad integrations with easy-to-operate infrastructure and user controls". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and Nolio Release Automation, whereas Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is most compared with Red Hat Satellite, Microsoft Configuration Manager, VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Azure DevOps and BMC TrueSight Server Automation. See our Chef vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report.
See our list of best Release Automation vendors and best Configuration Management vendors.
We monitor all Release Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
