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Chef vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Chef
Ranking in Build Automation
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (6th), Configuration Management (11th)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Build Automation
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (13th), Cloud Management (31st), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (9th), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 2.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 2.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Chef2.1%
VMware Tanzu Platform2.5%
Other95.4%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom
Automation has transformed daily infrastructure work and now frees teams to focus on new challenges
One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible. There should be a focus on how to make it understandable, not just to infrastructure people, but also to those working in monitoring. How can we ensure that it is part of their daily input? That is something that still has a small missing link. We are almost there, but it can help us achieve outcomes in the future in terms of objectives, not just workflows and visibility. How can we make real-time interactive dashboards more available? Look at what kind of tools can be integrated with them, not just working with the ones like Chef Kitchen and Habitat, but trying to make it even more flexible than what we have right now. On support, I think there should be more focus on how we can achieve AI automations in answering questions for beginners and addressing deep concerns without general manual management.
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools
Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Stable and scalable configuration management and automation tool. Installing it is easy. Its most valuable feature is its compliance, e.g. it's very good."
"Chef offers valuable features in infrastructure as code, where it uses cookbooks and recipes written in Ruby language for detailed and flexible configuration of systems and applications."
"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."
"I would rate this solution a nine because it's simple, easy to use, more versatile, and most importantly, it can handle the hundred thousand servers at the same time very easily and almost in no time."
"The features are good in Chef, especially its compliance feature; it's very good and it's what I found most valuable in the tool."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"My clients are happy, which is the most important thing."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"There are a lot of services available in VMware Tanzu Application Service, such as databases and application servers. You have everything you need in one application and you do not need to search outside of the solution."
"We never experienced any problems with scalability."
"The initial setup is easy."
"We never experienced any problems with scalability."
"The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility."
"The most popular feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is its graphical user interface for describing network policies on the Service Mesh, which is highly integrable with other tools commonly used in supply chains such as security."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"The learning curve is steep due to Chef's Ruby-based DSL and the complex components of cookbooks and recipes, which can be challenging for new users, especially those without programming backgrounds."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"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 agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"However, if you are on-premise, it may not be the best solution."
"The installation of VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is very complex."
"Tanzu is not yet a mature product, and it's not present in large environments."
"The network control and security policies must be improved."
"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode."
"Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity."
"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."
"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."
"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
"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."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the functionality that is exclusive to the paid version was actually in use in the orga...
What needs improvement with Chef?
I would add that Ruby is a domain-specific language in the Chef dialect, which is a learning curve, but so is Terraform and so is Ansible. The only feedback would be if they could come up with an i...
What is your primary use case for Chef?
My main use case for Chef is configuration and deployments. We receive blank servers and use Chef to build predefined application or appliance servers. A quick specific example of how I use Chef to...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The tool's flexibility in onboarding different clusters needs to improve, it's presently limited to a few clusters on the li...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.