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I am looking for an easy to use platform or VPS hosting service that will allow me to deploy additional VPS at will and quickly install the OS as well.
I am also looking for a backend software that allows team messaging (chat service, video, and audio) that can be self-hosted and is free. Also, an easy to use webRTC library would be great too!
I would recommend DigitalOcean for quick VPS creation. But it worth to consider Kubernetes or at least Docker. Once I did a project with DigitalOcean. They were guarantee kind of 90 seconds for creation of new VPS from a predefined template. But if you will decide to use Kubernetes (you can use DigitalOcean for that too, or other clouds, like Google, Azure, Amazon) - the deployment would be even much quicker than 90 seconds.

Do you referred about hosting or about tool/software to use in it ? About soft managing vps/dedicated server ... I tried manual lamp installation, cyperpanel, cpanel, plesk, webmin, etc.
Now, in my opinion, plesk offers the best solution.
I installed on Arsys web hosting (cloud vps) as free, and I pay official plesk support ($10/month). I could create domains, different accounts, etc.
I do that via cli (command line , bash commands), but you could do via web .
If you have any doubt askme ;)
I would suggest using Terraform to maintain your infrastructure as code. You can easily manage the underlying Virtual machines with the help of Terraform. I would also suggest to leverage the benefits of cloud computing by using something like AWS EC2 for as your VPS. I will also suggest RocketChat for your team communication. You can simply set this up using Docker. I am attaching the link on how to set-up Rocketchat with the help of Docker.

Use Amazon EC2 for your infrastructure (including the OS, Networking, Storage, Compute, etc.). Create an AWS account for free here.
Use Ansible to configure your Operating Systems, deploy software, and manage the configurations on your servers in AWS. Puppet and Chef are other options too, but those require an agent run on your servers. Ansible just requires an SSH connection to your servers and you push out playbook runs across your servers whenever you need. It's idempotent so it only pushes changes that it determines are new to the remote systems.
I think Slack has a free version you can use if you want. That's what I've always used for Business chat.
Use Docker for you applications. You never have to manage dependencies on your servers when you deploy your applications using docker containers. You might have to manage things like versions of python and other OS centric software libraries, but nothing that would be a specific dependency for your applications. Everything is built into the container.
you can achive all that using AWS EC2 instances (virtual machines) For chat and messaging We use mattermost (which you can install even with docker AWS fargate)

Hello
I would recommend rocketchat for team messaging, video, files sharing etc.... It's awesome and self hosted.
We've been using it for 5 years and no worries
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
Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:
- GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
- Respectively Git as revision control system
- SourceTree as Git GUI
- Visual Studio Code as IDE
- CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
- Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
- SonarQube as quality gate
- Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
- VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
- Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
- Heroku for deploying in test environments
- nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
- SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
- Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
- PostgreSQL as preferred database system
- Redis as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)
The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:
- Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
- Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
- Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
- Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
- Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
- Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.
lxd/lxc and Docker aren't congruent so this comparison needs a more detailed look; but in short I can say: the lxd-integrated administration of storage including zfs with its snapshot capabilities as well as the system container (multi-process) approach of lxc vs. the limited single-process container approach of Docker is the main reason I chose lxd over Docker.
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
- Rapid integration and build up823
- Isolation688
- Open source518
- Testability and reproducibility505
- Lightweight459
- Standardization217
- Scalable184
- Upgrading / downgrading / application versions105
- Security87
- Private paas environments84
- Portability33
- Limit resource usage25
- Game changer16
- I love the way docker has changed virtualization15
- Fast13
- Concurrency11
- Docker's Compose tools7
- Easy setup5
- Fast and Portable5
- Because its fun4
- Makes shipping to production very simple3
- It's dope2
- Highly useful2
- Very easy to setup integrate and build1
- Package the environment with the application1
- Does a nice job hogging memory1
- Open source and highly configurable1
- Simplicity, isolation, resource effective1
- MacOS support FAKE1
- Its cool1
- Docker hub for the FTW1
- HIgh Throughput1
Pros of Kubernetes
- Leading docker container management solution161
- Simple and powerful126
- Open source102
- Backed by google75
- The right abstractions56
- Scale services24
- Replication controller19
- Permission managment9
- Simple7
- Supports autoscaling7
- Cheap6
- Self-healing4
- No cloud platform lock-in4
- Reliable4
- Open, powerful, stable3
- Scalable3
- Quick cloud setup3
- Promotes modern/good infrascture practice3
- Backed by Red Hat2
- Cloud Agnostic2
- Runs on azure2
- Custom and extensibility2
- Captain of Container Ship2
- A self healing environment with rich metadata2
- Golang1
- Easy setup1
- Everything of CaaS1
- Sfg1
- Expandable1
- Gke1
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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
- New versions == broken features8
- Unreliable networking6
- Documentation not always in sync6
- Moves quickly4
- Not Secure3
Cons of Kubernetes
- Poor workflow for development14
- Steep learning curve12
- Orchestrates only infrastructure6
- High resource requirements for on-prem clusters3