Canonical Landscape vs Chef Infra

Canonical Landscape manages Ubuntu desktops, servers, cloud instances, IoT devices, and other Ubuntu systems from a central portal. Administrators can handle updates, packages and repositories, run scripts remotely, set role-based access, and monitor machines. It can alert on updates and graph temperature, disk and memory use, system load, and custom metrics. One instance can manage up to 40,000 machines, with options to scale further. Deployment choices are Canonical-hosted SaaS, Managed Landscape, and self-hosted software; SaaS is bundled with Ubuntu Pro. A free SaaS account with Ubuntu Pro covers up to five machines. Managed Landscape costs $6,861 a year per physical machine on public clouds, VMware, OpenStack, or LXD, or $9,470 a year per physical machine on bare metal. No self-hosted price is listed; Ubuntu Pro is its main licensing mechanism. Landscape has a scriptable API and can integrate with configuration management, monitoring, and ticketing systems. Self-hosting requires the organization to install, host, and maintain it. SaaS does not currently offer repository mirroring or custom external identity-provider configuration.

Chef Infra automates infrastructure configuration and helps keep systems aligned with a defined desired state. Teams express configurations and policies as code, test them, and deliver them through automated pipelines; Chef Infra can correct configuration drift when systems diverge. It supports Windows and Linux systems, cloud ARM systems, and Mac laptops across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments. Chef Infra Client includes more than 150 resources, while the community provides thousands of configuration templates. Chef Workstation bundles the client with Chef InSpec, Chef Habitat, Test Kitchen, Cookstyle, and Chef Upgrade Lab. The policy language is Ruby DSL, and listed capabilities include policy testing, reporting, and CI/CD integration. The free community version is non-commercial. Business costs $59 a year per node, and Enterprise costs $189 a year per node; Enterprise Plus requires a customized quote. Chef Infra Client 19.x is listed as the current LTS release, while 18.x is deprecated and earlier versions are end of life.