We performed a comparison between AWS CloudFormation and Chef 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."One of the most valuable aspects of Microsoft Intune is its seamless integration with Azure Active Directory, offering capabilities akin to Group Policy Objects."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"I believe that the solution is actually in Gartner's top quadrant at the moment for mobile device management."
"Autopilot is the most valuable feature."
"In terms of technical support, you will get an immediate response."
"Great for software update needs, operating system version updates, and security policy enforcement."
"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."
"The ability to manage devices with different sets of policies is most valuable."
"Its ability to treat infrastructure's code is valuable. It makes things automatable and reproducible."
"The integration of the solution is very good."
"What I like best about AWS CloudFormation is that it is a quick and simple way to deploy various applications, like WordPress."
"What I found most valuable in AWS CloudFormation is its configurability. The solution is easy to configure. I also like its change management configuration because that's also good."
"The nested stacks would be one of the more valuable features."
"There is a cost-benefit to using CloudFormation that comes about because of the automation that it provides."
"The solution has helped with automation. I don't have to worry about provisioning machines and ensuring everything is set up. AWS CloudFormation takes care of the entire infrastructure for me."
"I appreciate the flexibility of infrastructure as code. With CloudFormation, we can define ground rules, control usage limits, and scale our infrastructure up or down programmatically. Having this level of control through code on infra is a major benefit. That's the beauty of CloudFormation."
"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."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast. Chef-docker enabled us to have fewer sets of source code for different purposes. Configuration management was a breeze and all the servers were as good as immutable servers."
"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."
"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"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."
"There are some issues using the solution with macOS and iOS, and it offers limited granular control with them. Intune works better on Windows and Android."
"Lacking ability to leverage more iOS device management internally."
"Sometimes, updating a client policy is very difficult. This needs to be improved."
"They need to add more group policies. Intune currently does not have many group policies that you can deploy. Its reporting, which is very limited at the moment, also needs improvement. It will be great if they can add report customization. Its stability needs to be improved. Sometimes, when you register a device in Intune, it doesn't show up instantly on the engine portal on the admin side. They need to provide better support for complicated issues. They also have a long turnaround time."
"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."
"There are a couple of issues with stability."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see some kind of analytics report."
"The security features should be improved."
"One area where AWS CloudFormation could improve is by offering more flexibility in creating custom templates."
"AWS CloudFormation allows you to use the code templates written in JSON and YAML, but not directly in Python. Adding this feature would be beneficial."
"For improvement, it's crucial that AWS provides options in terms of computing services, DB related services, and machine learning solutions. If I'm not hands-on with a particular service, like machine learning applications, I struggle to write the CloudFormation code."
"As soon as they manage to parametrize the whole thing and to implement parameters at all levels, it will become automatically a lot more flexible."
"The conditions that can be added in AWS CloudFormation are not as powerful as any programming language."
"The product should be made cloud-agnostic, allowing users to deploy the same environment with minimal tweaks across different cloud platforms, similar to Terraform. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have the ability to manage templates outside of the AWS environment."
"It would help all users if AWS improved the auto-generation of the CloudFormation file."
"There could be better error handling. It would be a good way to improve the solution."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."
"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 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."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
AWS CloudFormation is ranked 8th in Configuration Management with 28 reviews while Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews. AWS CloudFormation is rated 8.4, while Chef is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of AWS CloudFormation writes "Pretty easy setup with great automations for provisioning that save time and money". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Chef writes "Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation". AWS CloudFormation is most compared with AWS Systems Manager, Spring Cloud, Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Microsoft Configuration Manager, whereas Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, BigFix and SaltStack. See our AWS CloudFormation vs. Chef 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.
