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Automic Continuous Delivery Automation [EOL] vs Chef comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Automic Continuous Delivery...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Chef
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (20th), Release Automation (11th), Configuration Management (18th)
 

Featured Reviews

MJ
The main benefit is you can deploy everything with it, but everybody has to need to use this tool in the organization
The main benefit is you can deploy everything with it, but everybody has to need to use this tool in the organization. If some organizations have their own tool, it is hard to make it clear that ARA would be better if everyone used it, because it provides a benefit when you can monitor all the users.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can support very complex environments and dependencies."
"I think on a day-to-day basis, it has increased the capacity to deploy. We don't have to wait for someone to do something."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to see which problems have been resolved from deployment."
"The IT process automation is the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"Self-service for developers, because they are able to deploy to development departments on their own, without needing people from operations."
"The capability to provide visibility to the stakeholders, to management, is the biggest piece that showcases what the solution is about."
"Gives people insight into what's happening during the deployment."
"We have saved on our time costs and have seen more quality."
"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."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"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."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"One of the biggest features I've been asked by my team to put in there is opening more scripting languages to be part of the platform. There is a little bit of a learning curve in learning how to code some of the workflows in Automic at this time. If widely used languages like Perl and Python were integrated, on top of what's already there, the proprietary language, it would make it easier to on-board new resources."
"I would like to see more support for WebSphere."
"The stability of the solution can be improved."
"We hope that we can integrate the new CD Directive into our portfolio, so we can bring the deployment and release management closer together."
"The dashboard should allow you to see the current state of packages in each environment, not only on an individual application basis, but across the entire application platform."
"Not a perfect ten because the user interface is brand new and it needs improvement."
"It would be very beneficial for us to see integrations into cloud environments, especially into the Google Cloud environment because we are heading towards cloud."
"There is an issue with the stability in the tool. The process of agent will stop, then the monitoring agent can't be recognized because the process is running, but you can talk with the system."
"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."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"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."
"It is an old technology."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I can save time and money more quickly."
"Customers often complain about the price."
"We increased our quality and reduced our time costs."
"If you have a fixed contract, it has limits to spreading out. If you have a flexible enterprise license contract, then you have a lot of scalability for this tool."
"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."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"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."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
18%
University
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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 or docker images.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

CA Continuous Delivery Automation, Automic Release Automation, Automic ONE Automation, UC4 Automation Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BET365, Charter Communications, TASC
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
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