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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Deployment
  4. Server Configuration And Automation
  5. Azure Resource Manager vs Chef

Azure Resource Manager vs Chef

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Chef
Chef
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.1K
Votes345
Azure Resource Manager
Azure Resource Manager
Stacks40
Followers93
Votes11
GitHub Stars64
Forks47

Azure Resource Manager vs Chef: What are the differences?

<Write Introduction here>

1. **Deployment Model**: Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is a cloud-based management tool used for deploying and managing Azure resources, while Chef is a configuration management tool used for automating the deployment and management of servers and applications.
2. **Scope of Management**: ARM is focused on managing resources within the Azure environment, such as virtual machines, storage accounts, and networks, whereas Chef is more focused on managing the configuration of servers and applications, including setting up environments, installing software, and enforcing desired states.
3. **Infrastructure Orchestration**: ARM enables the orchestration of complex deployments by defining templates that describe the resources to be provisioned, their dependencies, and configuration, while Chef uses cookbooks and recipes to define configurations and automate the deployment processes.
4. **Integration with Other Tools**: ARM is tightly integrated with other Azure services and tools, such as Azure DevOps and Azure Monitor, while Chef can be integrated with various tools and platforms, including Jenkins, Git, and Puppet, providing more flexibility in deployment workflows.
5. **Compliance and Security**: ARM provides built-in features for managing compliance and security requirements, such as role-based access control and resource policies, while Chef has features for managing compliance through automated testing and remediation of configurations, ensuring adherence to security standards.
6. **Customization and Extensibility**: ARM provides a set of predefined resource types and templates for deployment, while Chef allows users to create custom cookbooks and recipes for specific configurations and automation tasks, offering more customization and extensibility options.

In Summary, Azure Resource Manager and Chef differ in their deployment model, scope of management, infrastructure orchestration, integration with other tools, compliance and security features, and customization and extensibility options.

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Advice on Chef, Azure Resource Manager

Anonymous
Anonymous

Sep 17, 2019

Needs advice

I'm just getting started using Vagrant to help automate setting up local VMs to set up a Kubernetes cluster (development and experimentation only). (Yes, I do know about minikube)

I'm looking for a tool to help install software packages, setup users, etc..., on these VMs. I'm also fairly new to Ansible, Chef, and Puppet. What's a good one to start with to learn? I might decide to try all 3 at some point for my own curiosity.

The most important factors for me are simplicity, ease of use, shortest learning curve.

329k views329k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Chef
Chef
Azure Resource Manager
Azure Resource Manager

Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure with no downtime or interruptions. Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to another. Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace, OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.

It is the deployment and management service for Azure. It provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure subscription. You use management features, like access control, locks, and tags, to secure and organize your resources after deployment.

Access to 800+ Reusable Cookbooks;Integration with Leading Cloud Providers;Enterprise Platform Support including Windows and Solaris;Create, Bootstrap and Manage OpenStack Clouds;Easy Installation with 'one-click' Omnibus Installer;Automatic System Discovery with Ohai;Text-Based Search Capabilities;Multiple Environment Support;"Knife" Command Line Interface;"Dry Run" Mode for Testing Potential Changes;Manage 10,000+ Nodes on a Single Chef Server;Available as a Hosted Service;Centralized Activity and Resource Reporting;"Push" Command and Control Client Runs;Multi-Tenancy;Role-Based Access Control [RBAC];High Availability Installation Support and Verification;Centralized Authentication Using LDAP or Active Directory
Deploy app resources; Organize resources; Control access to resources
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
64
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
47
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
40
Followers
1.1K
Followers
93
Votes
345
Votes
11
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 110
    Dynamic and idempotent server configuration
  • 76
    Reusable components
  • 47
    Integration testing with Vagrant
  • 43
    Repeatable
  • 30
    Mock testing with Chefspec
Pros
  • 4
    Bicep - Simple Declarative Language
  • 2
    RBAC and Policies in templates
  • 1
    Day 1 resource support
  • 1
    Versioned deployment via Blueprints
  • 1
    Infrastructure-as-Code
Integrations
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure
HP Cloud Compute
HP Cloud Compute
Joyent Cloud
Joyent Cloud
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Docker
Docker
Ruby
Ruby
Terraform
Terraform
rkt
rkt

What are some alternatives to Chef, Azure Resource Manager?

Ansible

Ansible

Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates. Ansible’s goals are foremost those of simplicity and maximum ease of use.

Terraform

Terraform

With Terraform, you describe your complete infrastructure as code, even as it spans multiple service providers. Your servers may come from AWS, your DNS may come from CloudFlare, and your database may come from Heroku. Terraform will build all these resources across all these providers in parallel.

Capistrano

Capistrano

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows.

Puppet Labs

Puppet Labs

Puppet is an automated administrative engine for your Linux, Unix, and Windows systems and performs administrative tasks (such as adding users, installing packages, and updating server configurations) based on a centralized specification.

Salt

Salt

Salt is a new approach to infrastructure management. Easy enough to get running in minutes, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to communicate with them in seconds. Salt delivers a dynamic communication bus for infrastructures that can be used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more.

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation

You can use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create your own templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run your application. You don’t need to figure out the order in which AWS services need to be provisioned or the subtleties of how to make those dependencies work.

Fabric

Fabric

Fabric is a Python (2.5-2.7) library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks. It provides a basic suite of operations for executing local or remote shell commands (normally or via sudo) and uploading/downloading files, as well as auxiliary functionality such as prompting the running user for input, or aborting execution.

AWS OpsWorks

AWS OpsWorks

Start from templates for common technologies like Ruby, Node.JS, PHP, and Java, or build your own using Chef recipes to install software packages and perform any task that you can script. AWS OpsWorks can scale your application using automatic load-based or time-based scaling and maintain the health of your application by detecting failed instances and replacing them. You have full control of deployments and automation of each component

Packer

Packer

Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image. It embraces modern configuration management by encouraging you to use automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images.

Scalr

Scalr

Scalr is a remote state & operations backend for Terraform with access controls, policy as code, and many quality of life features.

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