HashiCorp Packer vs. Progress Chef

We use packer to generate new machine images for multiple platforms on every change to our Configuration Management tools like Chef/Puppet/Ansible It's act single tool for Image building for Multi-provider like AWS/Azure/GCP Helps to achieve Dev/Prod Parity Packer itself doesn't have a state like Terraform. You can't do packer output AMI ID. If you have a scenario where you want to maintain the state for images it would be tough to manage via Packer.

Incentivized

Chef is a very nice tool for establishing and maintaining a consistent configuration across a range of servers. In addition, Automate allows the continued monitoring and maintenance of servers so they don't drift from established standards. Overall, it deals very well with complex systems. Chef is slightly less applicable for a micro-services approach where the servers are replicated from a simple and known starting point.

Incentivized

• Multi-provider portability
• Greater testability
• Super fast infrastructure deployment

Incentivized

• Chef is very easy to learn. Written in ruby, Chef code is high enough level for non-ruby coders to get a general idea of what the script is doing.
• Chef can be a one stop shop for writing code, testing infrastructure, and deployment of applications.
• The Chef support team is very helpful in their auto manager support as well as active support in their Slack channels from development engineers & architects.

Incentivized

• Manageability
• Manageability
• Manageability

Incentivized

• One main concern with Chef is the maintainability of Chef master.
• The Chef-client should be installed on every node we want to do any automation.
• It is mostly Ruby and there's a learning curve. Need to understand the fundamentals of Chef very throughly to play around with attributes, templates etc etc.
• The Chef-client agent needs to be run on the nodes frequently to update the details of it state to master. And also to index the nodes based on tags.

Incentivized

We are happy with the use of Packer in our organization. Apart from manageability, I don't find any other drawback with Packer.

Incentivized

It's best for building Image with many features and benefits.

Incentivized

The suite of tools is very powerful. The ability to create custom modules allows for unlimited potential for managing all aspects of a system. However, there is pretty significant learning curve with the toolset. It currently takes approx 3-4 months for new engineers to feel comfortable with our implementation

Incentivized

It loads quick enough for basically all our systems. Because we have this for local dev environments, speed isn't really a big issue here. Yes, depending on the system, sometimes it does take a relatively long time, but it's not an issue for me. One thing that is annoying is that if I want to make a small change to a cookbook and re-run the Chef client, I can't just make the change in the cache and run it. I have to do the whole process of updating the server.

Incentivized

I only once required support and it was very smooth.

Incentivized

Support for Chef is easily available for fee or through the open source community as most the issues you will face will have been addressed through the Chef developer community forums. The documentation for Chef is moderate to great and easily readable.

Incentivized

I haven't found any issue in Implementation that itself describes how well this tool is built.

Incentivized

There are lot of tools in market which does the job for Image creation but all of them are not complete Machine/Image as a code. All other alternatives can create Image partially. Main reason for selecting Packer are Packer is lightweight, portable, and command-line driven Packer helps keep development, staging, and production as similar as possible. Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image Multi-provider portability is the feature to die for

Incentivized

Chef is the more developer-oriented of the three main tools in this space. It has a steeper learning curve as a result but it allows you to do more. Puppet seems to be more geared towards automated the management of the operating system. Ansible is an excellent tool but requires you to allow SSH connectivity into all of your instances.

Incentivized

• Super fast infrastructure deployment
• Quick turnaround of infrastructure in multiple cloud using single tool.
• Increase productivity by reducing time in infrastructure building.

Incentivized

• We can deploy tens to hundreds of servers in a small amount of time.
• We can grow our infrastructure very quickly with limited resources adjusting to customer demand as soon as the need arises.
• We are able to automate many of the mundane tasks that used to occupy the time of our engineers allowing us to focus on more critical tasks.

Incentivized