AWS CodeDeploy vs. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite

For greenfield projects built on AWS there are very few reasons why not to choose AWS CodeDeploy. It works out of the box and integrates seamlessly into your cloud environment. If you plan to migrate your existing legacy builds away e.g. from Jenkins, you may need to reserve a substantial amount of time for that and the benefits gained may not be worth the effort.

Incentivized

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is well suited to standard images of company approved software and standard configurations for all users. When every user has the same computer configuration, it is easily managed with a standard image across the board. It is less effective if you need to have multiple configurations for different groups. It becomes cumbersome to manage all the various images. When you add to the complexity by having to address the different drivers for the different hardware model computers, this only adds to the overall number of images you will have to manage, create and keep updated. I find Ghost most helpful with standard hardware model computers and one or two images company wide.

Incentivized

• Automate to deploy to AWS cloud environments
• Maximize application availability during product deployment
• AWS CodeDeploy provides CLI or web management console which can be viewed or edited at any environment

Incentivized

• Pushing out scripts and jobs to computers
• Remote imaging and pushing out Windows OS Images
• Helping to track who pushed out what jobs

Incentivized

• When deploying a branch, sometimes the repository won't auto-populate, and you have to add the source manually

Incentivized

• Initial install could be easier. Had to call support to assist.
• Joining domains had a few kinks that had to be figured out.

Incentivized

Jenkins supports a lot of plugings. Also with Jenkins, it is possible to manage everything through our own server. Those are 2 points where I rate Jenkins as one of the best DevOps Tool

Incentivized

The Symantec Ghost Solutions Suite learning curve isn't that steep.

• 1-2 months per year of working time was saved from administration compared to on-prem legacy solution.
• Teams can trust more on the CI/CD pipeline and the deployments are faster, so the teams can deploy 10-15% more often compared to on-prem legacy solutions.
• Developers tend to desire more bells and whistles than CodeDeploy can offer, there has been some critique but this can be seen also as "editor war" (everyone has their opinion).

Incentivized

• A positive impact of Ghost would be time. To deploy computers form scratch is very time consuming and labor intensive for the IT Department. Ghost clearly saves the time of the IT departments staff to quickly get a new computer out to user so they can spend their time on addressing other issues and being more productive.
• Time is money. If the IT department is spending hours preparing computers and employees are out of a computer for an extended period of time waiting for one to be loaded, this is money lost to the company in paying employees to sit around and wait for a computer to be configured.

Incentivized