We performed a comparison between Chef and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Intune's most valuable features are the device, compliance, and configuration policies."
"Being able to manage the devices remotely is most valuable. We can push security requirements through Microsoft Intune."
"I haven't used other mobile device management solutions, but compared to SCCM, we eliminate a lot of on-premises infrastructure and maintenance by using Intune."
"It has helped with compliance. It has helped to ensure that devices comply with the organization's policy. If they are not compliant and secure, they cannot access the resources."
"Based on my experience, I find Intune very flexible for managing Windows devices. We can use scripting, and we can make use of the self-service portal or the company portal to publish some of the applications for Windows."
"Intune provides full endpoint visibility and IT control across device platforms. You can individualize it for your company with the Intune Company Portal app."
"With on-premises Active Directory, the main challenge was that we had no control when a user was working from home. We didn't know what exactly a user was doing and whether the AV was up to date or not. Intune provides better control of their machines."
"If the product works, remote access will be a benefit. To this point we have not had reason to have confidence in achieving that access."
"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 most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"One thing that we've been able to do is a tiered permission model, allowing developers and their managers to perform their own operations in lower environments. This means a manager can go in and make changes to a whole environment, whereas a developer with less access may only be able to change individual components or be able to upgrade the version for software that they have control over."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"This solution has helped our organization by allowing us to store all the device configurations for the various network devices in NCM and making it easy for us to retrieve and look them over."
"The scanning features have proven to be highly valuable, particularly due to the comprehensive information they provide."
"The installation is straightforward."
"I use it for monitoring the entire network for the company. We oversee nodes down, we oversee devices heading up to crossing the threshold for CPU usage. We oversee power so power backups on the switches, we oversee if they're down or if they're failing. We oversee any node down or any router from any vendor."
"SolarWinds NCM provides updates on the status of your network infrastructure. If any issues arise, such as a link failure or a device going offline, you will receive notifications and alerts. Additionally, if someone unplugs a cable, SolarWinds NCM will detect it. It also features a Topology Mapper that displays the connectivity of your network devices, giving you a visual representation of the network's structure. With SolarWinds NCM, you have a clear understanding of what's happening within your network and can generate comprehensive reports."
"We push all our configurations to the servers with ease and the logs capture almost all the transactions needed for an internal audit."
"The most valuable Real-time fault detection is beneficial as it enables the identification of changes made to a device's configuration through the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. This makes it easy to pinpoint which configurations were added or removed, potentially causing network issues. Such changes are saved in logs for future reference."
"The configuration compliance aspect of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager allows for easy comparison of configuration settings across branches, ensuring adherence to security guidelines and best practices. Automation capabilities have greatly impacted workflows, enabling tasks such as configuration backups, template deployment, and firmware upgrades to be automated, thereby streamlining processes and saving time. Compliance reporting features provide valuable insights into network compliance, offering pre-built security audit reports and customizable options to meet specific requirements."
"It would be good if, in addition to the minimal patching and compliance, we could also use Intune for application deployment. For instance, if a device is not patched, Intune should have the ability to push not only a Microsoft patch but also other patches, such as a browser patch."
"It should be simplified. I've worked with many different mobile device management solutions, and Intune is one of the more complex ones. It could be more simplified, and some of it is related to the wording that is being used, such as a configuration profile versus a policy. They really should have had different names to make it less confusing."
"The synchronization could be improved."
"The pricing can be expensive if you are not combining it with other products."
"The UI also needs improvements because it is complex for end-users. We have had feedback from a few users in our organization who found the UI is not feasible for tracking and analyzing all the processes and monitoring all the devices."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see some kind of analytics report."
"There is room for improvement in integration and security as well."
"Reporting in Microsoft solutions is pathetic. With Intune, I'm getting a free inventory tool, but I don't get a reporting tool. When I go to Intune, I can see one machine's entire data in terms of the hardware and the software running on it, but I cannot generate a report for all the machines in the organization. The reporting is the only feature holding back the functionality that is already there."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"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."
"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."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"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."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"Improvements are needed in the automatic network mapping function."
"The solution could have better integration."
"I'd like to see additional features like support for devices that don't use CLI for configuration backups, expanded inventory support for other vendors beyond Cisco, and compatibility with newer SD WAN devices. These enhancements would further improve the product's versatility and utility for users. we hope for future enhancements, especially in supporting security devices that lack CLI backup options."
"Our experience has shown that most of the problems we've had with SolarWinds NCM are related to software issues."
"The network flow is a problem for this solution."
"When it comes to the way of managing the network devices, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager should provide the simplest way that devices can relate to the server. For example, when we want to get the devices on board, we go by SSH to make the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager create the connectivity with the device. After that, we pull the configuration. It would be helpful if they could combine both so that everything will be done in one step."
"I would like to see more integration tools. Something like dialysis, for example."
"The Network Configuration Manager needs to improve the access control list compliance."
More SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is ranked 11th in Configuration Management with 22 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager writes "Network configuration is done well; great pricing". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and SaltStack, whereas SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, Cisco Prime, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and OpenText Network Node Manager i. See our Chef vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager report.
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