StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Deployment
  4. Server Configuration And Automation
  5. Chef vs Rancher

Chef vs Rancher

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Chef
Chef
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.1K
Votes345
Rancher
Rancher
Stacks952
Followers1.5K
Votes644

Chef vs Rancher: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In the world of DevOps, managing infrastructure and orchestrating containers are essential tasks. Chef and Rancher are two popular tools that aid in these processes. Each has its own distinct features and benefits. Below are the key differences between Chef and Rancher.

  1. Deployment and Orchestration: Chef is primarily a configuration management tool that automates the deployment and management of infrastructure. It focuses on defining the desired state of your infrastructure and then ensuring it stays consistent. On the other hand, Rancher is a container management platform that provides tools for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications. It offers a user-friendly interface to deploy Kubernetes clusters and manage containerized workloads.

  2. Focusing on Infrastructure vs Containers: Chef is more focused on configuring and managing infrastructure components such as servers, networks, and storage. It excels in automating the setup and ongoing maintenance of servers and applications across various environments. Rancher, on the other hand, is designed for container orchestration and management, specifically targeting Docker and Kubernetes environments. It streamlines the containerization process and simplifies the management of containerized applications.

  3. Programming Language: Chef uses Ruby-based scripts called cookbooks to define and automate infrastructure configurations. Users write code in a Ruby Domain Specific Language (DSL) to create recipes that instruct Chef on how to configure servers. In contrast, Rancher leverages YAML-based templates and configurations to deploy and manage container workloads. Users define application stacks, services, and other resources using YAML files, making it simpler for container orchestration tasks.

  4. Community Support and Ecosystem: Chef has a large and active community that contributes cookbooks, plugins, and resources to enhance its functionality. Users can leverage this community support to find solutions to common issues and streamline their automation workflows. Rancher, while also having a supportive community, is more focused on container and Kubernetes-related topics. Its ecosystem includes tools and resources designed to facilitate container orchestration and management tasks.

  5. Scalability and Ease of Use: Chef is known for its scalability and flexibility, making it suitable for managing large and complex infrastructures. It allows users to define intricate configurations and automate various tasks across multiple servers efficiently. Rancher, on the other hand, is lauded for its ease of use and streamlined container deployment process. It caters to users looking for a straightforward solution to deploy and manage containerized applications without delving deep into intricate configurations.

  6. Integration Capabilities: Chef offers robust integration capabilities with various third-party tools and services, allowing users to incorporate it seamlessly into their existing tech stack. It can interact with cloud platforms, monitoring systems, source control tools, and more, enhancing the automation capabilities. Rancher, while also providing integrations with external services, focuses more on integrating container-related tools and services. It ensures compatibility with Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, and other container ecosystem components.

In Summary, Chef excels in managing infrastructure through automated configuration, while Rancher specializes in container orchestration and deployment, catering to different aspects of the DevOps landscape.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Chef, Rancher

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
Rancher
Rancher

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.

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

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
Manage Hosts, Deploy Containers, Monitor Resources;User Management & Collaboration;Native Docker APIs & Tools;Monitoring and Logging;Connect Containers, Manage Disks, Deploy Load Balancers;Docker App Catalog; Included Kubernetes Distribution;Included Docker Swarm Distribution; Included Mesos Distribution;Infrastructure Management
Statistics
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
952
Followers
1.1K
Followers
1.5K
Votes
345
Votes
644
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
  • 103
    Easy to use
  • 79
    Open source and totally free
  • 63
    Multi-host docker-compose support
  • 58
    Load balancing and health check included
  • 58
    Simple
Cons
  • 10
    Hosting Rancher can be complicated
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
Jenkins
Jenkins
Datadog
Datadog
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
Docker Compose
Docker Compose
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean
GitHub
GitHub
Docker
Docker
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Drone.io
Drone.io

What are some alternatives to Chef, Rancher?

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.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Docker Compose

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

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.

Docker Swarm

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

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.

Portainer

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub
Bitbucket

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Kubernetes
Rancher

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

gulp
Grunt

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Graphite
Kibana

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana