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Ansible vs Bazel: What are the differences?
- Packaging and Deployment: Ansible focuses on configuration management and automation of software deployment while Bazel is a software build tool that emphasizes on code compilation, testing, and packaging.
- Language Support: Ansible uses YAML for defining tasks and playbooks, making it straightforward for configuration management, whereas Bazel supports multiple programming languages, providing flexibility for different project requirements.
- Workflow Integration: Ansible offers integration with various IT automation tools and systems to enable a seamless workflow, while Bazel centralizes building and testing processes to streamline the development workflow.
- Scalability: Ansible is suitable for managing configurations across numerous servers efficiently. In contrast, Bazel is designed for large-scale software projects with a focus on build speed and reproducibility.
- Community and Ecosystem: Ansible has a broad community and a vast collection of modules for various tasks, making it easier to leverage pre-existing solutions. On the other hand, Bazel has a growing community and a strong ecosystem that supports a wide range of programming languages and tools.
- Use Cases: Anisble is ideal for automating repetitive tasks, configurations, and deployments in IT environments, while Bazel is best suited for large software projects requiring efficient build processes and dependency management.
In Summary, Ansible and Bazel differ in their focus on packaging and deployment, language support, workflow integration, scalability, community, and ecosystem, as well as use cases.
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.
I have been working with Puppet and Ansible. The reason why I prefer ansible is the distribution of it. Ansible is more lightweight and therefore more popular. This leads to situations, where you can get fully packaged applications for ansible (e.g. confluent) supported by the vendor, but only incomplete packages for Puppet.
The only advantage I would see with Puppet if someone wants to use Foreman. This is still better supported with Puppet.
If you are just starting out, might as well learn Kubernetes There's a lot of tools that come with Kube that make it easier to use and most importantly: you become cloud-agnostic. We use Ansible because it's a lot simpler than Chef or Puppet and if you use Docker Compose for your deployments you can re-use them with Kubernetes later when you migrate
Pros of Ansible
- Agentless284
- Great configuration210
- Simple199
- Powerful176
- Easy to learn155
- Flexible69
- Doesn't get in the way of getting s--- done55
- Makes sense35
- Super efficient and flexible30
- Powerful27
- Dynamic Inventory11
- Backed by Red Hat9
- Works with AWS7
- Cloud Oriented6
- Easy to maintain6
- Vagrant provisioner4
- Simple and powerful4
- Multi language4
- Simple4
- Because SSH4
- Procedural or declarative, or both4
- Easy4
- Consistency3
- Well-documented2
- Masterless2
- Debugging is simple2
- Merge hash to get final configuration similar to hiera2
- Fast as hell2
- Manage any OS1
- Work on windows, but difficult to manage1
- Certified Content1
Pros of Bazel
- Fast28
- Deterministic incremental builds20
- Correct17
- Multi-language16
- Enforces declared inputs/outputs14
- High-level build language10
- Scalable9
- Multi-platform support5
- Sandboxing5
- Dependency management4
- Windows Support2
- Flexible2
- Android Studio integration1
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Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous8
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2
Cons of Bazel
- No Windows Support3
- Bad IntelliJ support2
- Poor windows support for some languages1
- Constant breaking changes1
- Learning Curve1
- Lack of Documentation1
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