We performed a comparison between Chef and SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor 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."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."
"It's normally able to meet 100% expectations of our customers."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is having all our devices compliant with our policies."
"The mobile application management, MAM, is the most useful aspect of the solution."
"For Windows services, there are multiple options within Intune to modernize it to be more internet-facing and dynamic."
"I like the fact that it's integrated with the rest of the Microsoft products, so customers can manage it from their Office 365 portal or Azure portal."
"It is a helpful tool to manage BYOD policies."
"The solution has reduced the risk of security breaches by 30%."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"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 its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"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 of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is version control. For example, if we began on the first of the month and we considered that as the configuration of the server, I could set that configuration as my baseline. On a daily basis, if there was the operations team that did, for example, server patching, the tool will maintain all levels of versions."
"The product’s alert feature is good. We receive notifications whenever some failures occur in the configuration."
"The add-ons must be integrated into the solution."
"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."
"Microsoft Intune is not user-friendly to manage and has room for improvement."
"The reporting needs to be a bit more interactive."
"When somebody has a customized application or their own company's application, we cannot deploy that application."
"There is room for improvement in integrating additional features such as Purview and SharePoint activities into Intune."
"It would be great to see on-premises mailboxes and for the solution to have geofencing capabilities."
"Sometimes, updating a client policy is very difficult. This needs to be improved."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"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."
"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."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"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 agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"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 product’s support services and licensing models need improvement."
"In a feature release, they could enhance the reporting. However, we have not evaluated this part of the solution extensively."
More SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →
Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is ranked 17th in Configuration Management with 2 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor writes "Useful version control, high availability, and scales well". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and SaltStack, whereas SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is most compared with HashiCorp Terraform. See our Chef vs. SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor report.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors.
We monitor all Configuration Management 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.