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Ansible vs Docker Machine: What are the differences?
What is Ansible? Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine. Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates. Ansible’s goals are foremost those of simplicity and maximum ease of use.
What is Docker Machine? Machine management for a container-centric world. Machine lets you create Docker hosts on your computer, on cloud providers, and inside your own data center. It creates servers, installs Docker on them, then configures the Docker client to talk to them.
Ansible and Docker Machine are primarily classified as "Server Configuration and Automation" and "Container" tools respectively.
"Agentless" is the top reason why over 251 developers like Ansible, while over 12 developers mention "Easy docker hosts management" as the leading cause for choosing Docker Machine.
Ansible and Docker Machine are both open source tools. Ansible with 37.8K GitHub stars and 15.8K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Docker Machine with 5.37K GitHub stars and 1.55K GitHub forks.
PedidosYa, Keen, and New Relic are some of the popular companies that use Ansible, whereas Docker Machine is used by Leftronic, Docker, and DNT. Ansible has a broader approval, being mentioned in 955 company stacks & 578 developers stacks; compared to Docker Machine, which is listed in 43 company stacks and 46 developer stacks.
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.
AnsibleI 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
- Agentless278
- Great configuration205
- Simple195
- Powerful173
- Easy to learn151
- Flexible66
- Doesn't get in the way of getting s--- done54
- Makes sense34
- Super efficient and flexible29
- Powerful27
- Dynamic Inventory11
- Backed by Red Hat8
- Works with AWS7
- Cloud Oriented6
- Easy to maintain6
- Because SSH4
- Multi language4
- Easy4
- Simple4
- Procedural or declarative, or both4
- Simple and powerful4
- Consistency3
- Vagrant provisioner3
- Fast as hell2
- Masterless2
- Well-documented2
- Merge hash to get final configuration similar to hiera2
- Debugging is simple2
- Work on windows, but difficult to manage1
- Certified Content1
Pros of Docker Machine
- Easy docker hosts management12
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Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous7
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2
Cons of Docker Machine
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