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Ansible or Saltstack?
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Ansible or Saltstack?

smansman Member
edited August 2015 in General

I have been looking at implementing one of these two for awhile now and can't decide. Looking for opinions.

I've read what few recent reviews there are. Since both seem to be evolving rapidly I think only very recent reviews are relevant.

I'm really comfortable with OpenSSH so that is where Ansible comes out ahead. However, I kind of like the design and scalability of Saltstack.

Comments

  • Awmusic12635Awmusic12635 Member, Host Rep

    sman said: Puppet and Chef are overkill and too complicated for what I need so they are not being considered.

    What do you need it for?

  • smansman Member

    managing servers

  • Awmusic12635Awmusic12635 Member, Host Rep

    sman said: managing servers

    I am more curious why something like puppet and chef are overkill when they do what you want, managing servers.

    Sorry, a bit confused.

  • SilvengaSilvenga Member
    edited August 2015

    I personally like the community of SaltStack better - along with faster state processing (hundreds of states in seconds) and push (rather than pull) architecture. That said Salt Minions run from around 8Mb to 32Mb's, so heavy compared to Ansible.

  • Ansible if you prefer central control (my choice). SaltStack if you prefer to install and have an agent running on every server. Due to time constraints, had to choose one over the other and I'm going with Ansible for now, but plan to check SaltStack out as well when I can find the time.

  • smansman Member
    edited August 2015

    I've used Chef and Puppet is even worse. Not an option. The whole ruby thing with Chef is kind of a deal breaker as well. I like the fact Salt and Ansible are written in Python which I know how to work with somewhat. Relatively easy to work with Python on Linux. My limted experience with Ruby on Linux was just the opposite. I don't really know Ruby and not interested in learning.

    I spent some time working with Chef cookbooks and never really liked it. I much prefer using Yaml which Salt and Ansible both use.

  • smansman Member
    edited August 2015

    @Silvenga said:
    I personally like the community of SaltStack better - along with faster state processing (hundreds of states in seconds) and push (rather than pull) architecture. That said Salt Minions run from around 8Mb to 32Mb's, so heavy compared to Ansible.

    Community is hugely important. That's a big plus. As far as I can tell Ansible is being mostly written by one guy. If he gets hit by a bus then what?!

    I have no problem running agents. 8Mb-32Mb Minions is extremely heavy. I will have to look into that. Thanks for the info

  • I personally like saltstack more than ansible.

    • the syntax is more sane,
    • and jinja template is powerful and familiar for python developers
    • I believe zmq based transportation is more efficient than the ssh based solution.
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