Octopus Deploy vs. SUSE Manager

Octopus Deploy is a well though [the] solution to the deployment orchestration problem. It is a reliable and robust solution that is relatively simple to understand. [Its] UI is friendly and easy to use, The support and documentation [are] excellent and the product seems to fit into any organization’s process very well and with less effort than other products in this space. I actually find it a pleasure to work with [every day] and I am glad to have it as an integral part of our process.

Incentivized

In our specific use case, SUSE Manager is extremely useful. We're having a large landscape that is divided into intake, development, quality and production with a couple of different SUSE flavours that need to be automatically rolled out, configured, patched and maintained, everything from up to date repositories that are cloned on a daily basis straight from SUSE.

Incentivized

• Octopus integrates nicely with TeamCity, our build server.
• Octopus uses the same deployment packages across environments and makes it easy to track their progress across those environments.
• Octopus makes it easy to handle configuration across environments which is usually a particularly difficult task.

Incentivized

• Manages patch levels for most Linux OS by: date, group, cloud or custom channels
• Uses a lite version of Salt to run commands or scripts on any numbers of servers at once.
• Allows the joining of groups inside SUSE Manager to quickly access or work with servers so grouped.

• UI is very fluffy and padded. It looks pretty but it could benefit from a more compact, information-focused design
• Deployment process options are not always laid out in an intuitive manner. Choosing which steps to exclude, which environments or targets to deploy to, etc., is not immediately clear
• Lack of useful reports and metrics for tracking active deployments and historical data

Incentivized

• The cloning of patches when using the content lifecycle module in a multi-environment landscape with many SLES flavours is a bit cumbersome.
• More premade saltstate for default applications are always nice to have.
• Upgrading SUMA could be easier, especially when a Postgres upgrade is also required.

Incentivized

Would be a 10 except for the retirement of the free Community Edition.

Incentivized

I am expanding the use of SUSE Manager throughout our organization and can't imagine going back to the "wild wild west" we had before.

Octopus Deploy has greatly helped us to improve our reliability and frequency of our deployments and given us the confidence to deploy much more often, with a direct benefit to customers. Cross-platform support and release to Cloud require more focus on the product side.

Incentivized

Octopus Deploy is a software that runs very effectively, is easy to use, does not require such a high learning curve, provides the necessary tools to carry out the functions it offers, making it a very flexible software, it also allows that can be configured according to the needs of the user and provides integrations with other very advantageous tools since they are carried out in a very favorable way.

Incentivized

Octopus Deploy support has always been there for us, even when using the free tier, we get responsive hands-on help. We haven't needed to use that level of support since the documentation is clearly written, and help is readily available within the interface itself. Using Octopus Deploy is a truly joyful experience.

Incentivized

SUSE Manager provided a top-tier support person on site to us for two days to help integration. We did all the standard stuff they help with before he arrived. We were able to use him to get all the tricky stuff identified and solved in the short time we had. Had they sent us a lower-tier guy, it would have been a waste. I was impressed they sent such knowledgeable person.

There aren't really any competitors in the land of ASP.NET. Deployment is too ad-hoc. Other tools exist that have massive downsides, like Web Deploy. Most aren't even supported anymore. You could argue that containers (Docker) are a competitor, but containers cannot be used for everything and solve a somewhat different problem. Octopus Deploy is even able to help with containers. To us, Octopus Deploy was really the only really polished solution.

Incentivized

The other competitors also have a good platform and service, but we went with SUSE due to cost. The price was best and we needed to keep under a certain budget. The functionality was perfect for what we needed so we took the step forward. This allows us to manage our Linux environment within the manager and update or deploy specific tasks to each as needed.

Incentivized

Great support from professional services.

Incentivized

• While not an inexpensive product, it has proven to be a good value. I don't have firm ROI numbers but our PROD deployment quality has improved, and we now measure deployment times in "person-minutes" rather than "person-hours".
• Our defect rate due to missed configuration items has been significantly reduced.
• Octopus has enhanced our ability to enforce SDLC separation-of-duties.

Incentivized

• Manages patch levels for most Linux OS by: date, group, cloud or custom channels
• Make it easy to audit our own infrastructure.
• Allows the joining of groups inside SUSE Manager to quickly access or work with servers so grouped.
• 24/7 support team.
• Automatic deployment.

Incentivized