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Chef vs vCenter Configuration Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
296
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
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (20th), Release Automation (11th)
vCenter Configuration Manager
Ranking in Configuration Management
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.9%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Configuration Manager is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license
The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.
Aaron  P - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation
In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.
Nikhil Nikhil - PeerSpot reviewer
Compliance management has improved efficiency but licensing changes pose challenges
I am not using any advanced features or AI. I am employing a basic VMware vCenter setup for my infrastructure. Scalability has no major limitations, and the solution is efficient. Overall, it's satisfactory. I would rate the vCenter experience as seven out of ten due to concerns regarding license, pricing, and AI features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"EAM is a godsend."
"Microsoft Intune is a cost-saving solution, reducing IT department workload and allowing for faster device provisioning compared to traditional methods."
"The Autopilot feature is fantastic. It is a Microsoft product, so it deals best with Microsoft operating systems, but it can integrate with iOS, Mac OS, Linux, and Android."
"Comparing this to having an endpoint management solution, the efficiency gain may be up to 80%."
"One valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is the enrollment process, which is user-based, making it easier to manage compared to AirWatch."
"The mobile device management is very useful."
"A valuable feature is user enrollment, where users can enroll their devices in their organizations themselves."
"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"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."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"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."
"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."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"The product's initial setup process is very simple."
"vCenter is very easy to use if you have good skills. It takes a little time to configure everything. It is template-based, so you click, click, and then reboot. It takes 15 minutes."
"vCenter Configuration Manager is a stable solution that is very easy to manage and deploy."
"The clustering part and the load balancing part are most valuable."
"Configuration Manager simplifies management. Cloning via live migration is a useful feature."
"The most valuable features of vCenter Configuration Manager are highly mature technology."
"The management of vCenter Configuration Manager can support the UI interface. It helps in monitoring, logging alert and performance, forecasting the system to provide services in the environment."
"Beneficial patch management and template features."
 

Cons

"Regarding mobile devices, Intune is good, but there are other services that I would say are ahead of Intune from an administration and reporting point of view."
"Intune lags all of its competitors in terms of report generation."
"The reporting functionality of Microsoft Intune is limited compared to Microsoft System Center, which offers many more reporting options."
"There can be delays in the deployment of new policies."
"I wanted to check if there is any provision at the Intune level to restrict certain things, such as a website, but unfortunately, that feature is available only in Microsoft Defender. Intune has web filtering capabilities, but they are only useful for protection from malicious websites, whereas we would like to be able to restrict a website. For example, YouTube is a clean website. No one would identify it as a malicious website, but if we want to stop the end-users from going to that website, we have to go for another product, such as Microsoft Defender or another third-party proxy solution. It would be great if this capability is included in Intune."
"I heard some pain points. The main thing is the learning curve. It took time to implement. It was not the best product starting out of the gate."
"I am not involved in the day-to-day with Intune, but we have gone with a different product for updating mobile device software. We do not integrate many of our mobile devices that are not Microsoft-based devices, such as Dell laptops, with Intune."
"Not all technicians are knowledgeable of the Microsoft solution, so they have to work on that as well."
"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."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"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."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"It is an old technology."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in operating and managing cluster environments and maintenance. And hardware environment visibility."
"The price could be reduced."
"The Self Service Interface is not very good and it needs improvement."
"When vCenter is in a Microsoft environment, there is a lot of licensing involved, where we face some difficulties."
"Their licensing needs to be improved."
"The ease of setup and installations could be improved."
"The reporting could be improved."
"SAP CRM could improve by adding additional automation features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Generally, we get favorable discounts, so it's not too bad. Obviously, we're looking at decreasing those wherever we can to bring value back to the public purse because it's all charity based. It's all publicly funded."
"Microsoft Intune is included in the E5 license at no additional cost."
"The price of Microsoft Intune is reasonable."
"With our standard E5 agreement with Microsoft, there have been no pricing concerns. Introductory professional services, like a fast-track service, were included with our E5 membership, and there have been no additional costs."
"I have no comment on pricing of the solution."
"The pricing is competitive, but it is not cheap."
"Microsoft Intune is moderately priced. There is a monthly license required to use the solution and it is approximately eight dollars per month."
"Microsoft Intune has been incorporated into our Microsoft E5 licenses."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The product is highly-priced."
"The product price and licensing fees are reasonable, especially when compared to other products in the market."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Their licensing costs are high. But I think for the scale that we are using, it's suitable. If you use it on a larger scale with many servers, you have to pay a lot of money for them. I think it's suitable for organizations that don't need expert people that want more money each year or each month because it's a straightforward solution. We prefer to pay for these products that are integrated and straightforward."
"This product is not cheap. I have a yearly license for vCenter and the license is not cheap."
"The price of the solution is expensive. However, it is reasonably priced compared to competitors."
"It is on a yearly basis."
"I am not knowledgeable with the pricing of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
 

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 do you like most about vCenter Configuration Manager?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Configuration Manager?
Nowadays, it is a bit expensive. It's costly, primarily due to the licensing aspect.
What needs improvement with vCenter Configuration Manager?
My impression on the impact of the real-time monitoring features of vCenter Configuration Manager is that it's somewh...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Bank Al Bilad, Thomas-Krenn.AG, Pronto!, Unimed Juiz de Fora
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. vCenter Configuration Manager and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.