

Chef and Microsoft Azure DevOps are competing in IT automation and DevOps lifecycle management. Azure DevOps is seen as superior due to its extensive capabilities and integration with Microsoft's cloud services, although Chef has favorable pricing and support.
Features: Chef features strong infrastructure automation, a robust DSL for system configuration, and advanced scripting capabilities. Azure DevOps includes comprehensive CI/CD pipelines, seamless integration with Microsoft's cloud, and tools for project tracking.
Room for Improvement: Chef could enhance support for third-party tool integration, improve GUI design, and streamline rollback processes. Azure DevOps may benefit from better documentation, increased customization options, and enhanced performance in large-scale environments.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Chef offers flexible deployment options with strong community support, although Azure DevOps provides an integrated experience with Microsoft ecosystem, offering robust customer service and seamless code to cloud deployment.
Pricing and ROI: Chef provides a competitive initial cost with a notable ROI for teams focused on configuration management. While Azure DevOps may have a higher price, it offers a strong ROI through its comprehensive toolset, boosting productivity and deployment efficiency.
The return has been far more hours saved than spent.
Chef has provided a return on investment, particularly in needing fewer employees, as the tool significantly reduces the amount of human work required for many tasks.
We have seen significant improvement in the time and the way we make changes to the infrastructure.
On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the best, I would say ROI is an eight.
There has been a measurable improvement in productivity of around 40 to 50% after implementing Microsoft Azure DevOps, which has allowed more time to be spent on other things.
We usually work with the Chef teams and community support, who are always willing to assist.
When requirements arise, they are raised and often get fixed within one or two days.
Resolving issues took time since understanding our unique problems was not always straightforward for support teams.
I would rate technical support from Microsoft for Microsoft Azure DevOps an eight out of ten.
We leverage both to achieve the best option possible for scaling.
Chef's scalability handles a large number of nodes easily, allowing us to manage hundreds of servers consistently using the same set of cookbooks.
Chef's scalability is evident as the public sector organization I work at serves a population of 5 million, and we have had no problems with scaling.
The scalability has left me pleased, not just for our teams in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but as we expanded into North America, Africa, and even Australia.
Microsoft Azure DevOps is scalable, with multiple options available to scale up the product as needed, given its Microsoft backing.
It is a good tool to work with, offering a strong developer experience and community support.
Chef is stable.
In my experience, Chef is quite stable most of the time.
Its stability might be attributed to its legacy as an on-premise solution that has been in development for more than 25 years.
There was just one time when there was some infrastructure issue from Microsoft's side, so we faced some glitches for a few minutes only, not for hours or a day.
Microsoft Azure DevOps is definitely stable, as it is available most of the time, with very few downtimes.
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.
Self-healing infrastructure continuously verifies that the system matches the desired state and can auto-correct configuration changes during the next run.
To improve Chef, making an interface with another language such as Python or Java that is well understood, as capable as Ruby, and even more widely adopted would demystify it a bit.
Those processes are a bit difficult for some customers who may not have technical knowledge and don't go through the entire documentation.
Out of the box, the solution is effective, yet with advancements in AI, it has the potential to be more intuitive.
Instead of customers having to try many options themselves, they benefit from practitioner recommendations.
Licensing looks reasonable compared to the manual work of managing whole data centers with even 10,000 servers.
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 organization.
They don't even provide a POC where you can have a sandbox or stuff that you can go through and see how exactly it's costing.
I find it to be expensive.
Azure charges only the parking cost, not for unnecessary or unwanted cost.
Security is a key aspect that Chef can automate, monitor new features that are available, and even do patches without you getting involved.
Chef can manage hundreds or thousands of servers effortlessly, allowing for easy rollout of a single cookbook change to all machines.
When you have infrastructure as code and you already have everything apart from the environment-specific config, which you can specify in variables, then it is not only more repeatable and reliable, it is faster.
Whenever something is created or deployed, it automatically triggers the automated scripts, generates reports, and updates the test cases, providing a seamless end-to-end activity.
I can't approve my own request and move the code around without a review.
Our company organized a training session with a certified Azure expert, which was extremely beneficial for adopting best practices during the initial three months.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Azure DevOps | 31.1% |
| Chef | 1.5% |
| Other | 67.4% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 3 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 19 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 42 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 28 |
| Large Enterprise | 69 |
Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.
Microsoft Azure DevOps is a cloud service that enables developers to collaborate on code development projects and create and deploy applications quicker than ever before. The service helps unite developers, project managers, and software development experts through a collaborative experience while using the application. For the users' convenience, Azure DevOps offers the user cloud services through Azure DevOps Services or an on-premises service using Azure DevOps Server. In addition, it supports integration with additional services and adding extensions, including the ability for the user to create their own custom extensions.
Azure DevOps provides a variety of unified features that can be accessed through their web browser or IDE client, such as:
Benefits of Microsoft Azure DevOps
Microsoft Azure DevOps offers many benefits, including:
Reviews from Real Users
Microsoft Azure DevOps stands out among its competitors for a variety of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to forecast how long each task will take and the ability for users to follow the entire development process.
PeerSpot viewers note the effectiveness of this solution. An executive chief operating officer for a cloud provider notes, “We can forecast tasks and the number of hours a task will take and can compare it with how long a task actually takes.”
Carlos H., a product and system director at SPCM, writes, “I think the most usable thing is that you can follow the whole progress of the development process. This makes it very useful for us.”
We monitor all Release Automation 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.