Ansible vs Apache Maven

Overview

Ansible

Stacks19.5K

Followers15.6K

Votes1.3K

GitHub Stars66.9K

Forks24.1K

Apache Maven

Stacks3.4K

Followers1.7K

Votes414

GitHub Stars4.8K

Forks2.8K

Ansible vs Apache Maven: What are the differences?

Introduction:

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Ansible and Apache Maven, outlining the key differences between the two tools.

Installation and Deployment: Ansible is a configuration management and automation tool that is agentless, meaning it does not require any specific software to be installed on the target machines. On the other hand, Apache Maven is a build automation tool that requires its binary to be installed on the system where the builds are performed.
Domain of Application: Ansible is primarily used for automating infrastructure configuration and management tasks, making it well-suited for tasks such as orchestration, configuration management, and application deployment. Apache Maven, on the other hand, is specifically designed for managing Java-based projects, including the build process, dependency management, and project documentation generation.
Scripting Language: Ansible uses YAML, a human-readable data serialization format, for defining playbooks and tasks, as well as Jinja2 templates for managing configurations. In contrast, Apache Maven relies on XML for defining the project's build process, dependencies, and other settings, which can be less intuitive and readable than YAML.
Community and Ecosystem: Ansible has a large and active community, with extensive documentation, a vast number of pre-built roles, and modules available on the Ansible Galaxy platform. It also supports integration with other DevOps tools, such as Git, Jenkins, and Docker. Apache Maven also has a strong community and ecosystem, focused specifically on Java projects, with a rich repository of plugins available through the Maven Central Repository.
Workflow and Configuration Management: Ansible follows a push-based model, where the control machine initiates connections to the target machines and pushes the required configurations and tasks. On the other hand, Apache Maven operates based on a pull-based model, where the build process is initiated on the developer's machine or build server, pulling the required dependencies and resources from centralized repositories.
Build Lifecycle: Apache Maven has a well-defined build lifecycle with phases such as compilation, testing, packaging, and deployment. Each phase can be customized through plugin configurations, allowing developers to define specific actions to be executed at different stages of the build process. Ansible, being a configuration management tool, does not have a predefined build lifecycle but focuses more on the configuration and management of system resources.

In summary, Ansible is an agentless configuration management and automation tool used for infrastructure management, while Apache Maven is a build automation tool specifically designed for Java projects. Ansible uses YAML and Jinja2 for scripting, while Apache Maven relies on XML. Ansible follows a push-based model, whereas Apache Maven operates based on a pull-based model.

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Advice on Ansible, Apache Maven

Anonymous

Sep 17, 2019

Needs advice

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.

329k views329k

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Detailed Comparison

Ansible	Apache Maven
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.	Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects.
Ansible's natural automation language allows sysadmins, developers, and IT managers to complete automation projects in hours, not weeks.;Ansible uses SSH by default instead of requiring agents everywhere. Avoid extra open ports, improve security, eliminate "managing the management", and reclaim CPU cycles.;Ansible automates app deployment, configuration management, workflow orchestration, and even cloud provisioning all from one system.	Simple project setup that follows best practices - get a new project or module started in seconds;Consistent usage across all projects means no ramp up time for new developers coming onto a project;Superior dependency management including automatic updating, dependency closures (also known as transitive dependencies);Able to easily work with multiple projects at the same time;A large and growing repository of libraries and metadata to use out of the box, and arrangements in place with the largest Open Source projects for real-time availability of their latest releases;Extensible, with the ability to easily write plugins in Java or scripting languages;Instant access to new features with little or no extra configuration;Ant tasks for dependency management and deployment outside of Maven
Statistics
GitHub Stars 66.9K	GitHub Stars 4.8K
GitHub Forks 24.1K	GitHub Forks 2.8K
Stacks 19.5K	Stacks 3.4K
Followers 15.6K	Followers 1.7K
Votes 1.3K	Votes 414
Pros & Cons
Pros 284 Agentless 210 Great configuration 199 Simple 176 Powerful 155 Easy to learn Cons 8 Dangerous 5 Hard to install 3 Backward compatibility 3 Bloated 3 Doesn't Run on Windows	Pros 138 Dependency management 70 Necessary evil 60 I’d rather code my app, not my build 48 Publishing packaged artifacts 43 Convention over configuration Cons 6 Complex 1 Inconsistent buillds 0 Not many plugin-alternatives
Integrations
Nexmo Stackdriver VMware vSphere Docker OpenStack Amazon EC2 Rackspace Cloud Servers Google Compute Engine New Relic PagerDuty	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Ansible, Apache Maven?

Chef

Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure with no downtime or interruptions. Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to another. Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace, OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.

Terraform

With Terraform, you describe your complete infrastructure as code, even as it spans multiple service providers. Your servers may come from AWS, your DNS may come from CloudFlare, and your database may come from Heroku. Terraform will build all these resources across all these providers in parallel.

Gradle

Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. If you are building, testing, publishing, and deploying software on any platform, Gradle offers a flexible model that can support the entire development lifecycle from compiling and packaging code to publishing web sites.

Capistrano

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows.

Puppet Labs

Puppet is an automated administrative engine for your Linux, Unix, and Windows systems and performs administrative tasks (such as adding users, installing packages, and updating server configurations) based on a centralized specification.

Salt

Salt is a new approach to infrastructure management. Easy enough to get running in minutes, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to communicate with them in seconds. Salt delivers a dynamic communication bus for infrastructures that can be used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more.

Bazel

Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment.

Fabric

Fabric is a Python (2.5-2.7) library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks. It provides a basic suite of operations for executing local or remote shell commands (normally or via sudo) and uploading/downloading files, as well as auxiliary functionality such as prompting the running user for input, or aborting execution.

AWS OpsWorks

Start from templates for common technologies like Ruby, Node.JS, PHP, and Java, or build your own using Chef recipes to install software packages and perform any task that you can script. AWS OpsWorks can scale your application using automatic load-based or time-based scaling and maintain the health of your application by detecting failed instances and replacing them. You have full control of deployments and automation of each component

Pants

Pants is a build system for Java, Scala and Python. It works particularly well for a source code repository that contains many distinct projects.

Related Comparisons

Ansible vs Apache Maven: What are the differences?

Introduction:

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Ansible and Apache Maven, outlining the key differences between the two tools.

Installation and Deployment: Ansible is a configuration management and automation tool that is agentless, meaning it does not require any specific software to be installed on the target machines. On the other hand, Apache Maven is a build automation tool that requires its binary to be installed on the system where the builds are performed.
Domain of Application: Ansible is primarily used for automating infrastructure configuration and management tasks, making it well-suited for tasks such as orchestration, configuration management, and application deployment. Apache Maven, on the other hand, is specifically designed for managing Java-based projects, including the build process, dependency management, and project documentation generation.
Scripting Language: Ansible uses YAML, a human-readable data serialization format, for defining playbooks and tasks, as well as Jinja2 templates for managing configurations. In contrast, Apache Maven relies on XML for defining the project's build process, dependencies, and other settings, which can be less intuitive and readable than YAML.
Community and Ecosystem: Ansible has a large and active community, with extensive documentation, a vast number of pre-built roles, and modules available on the Ansible Galaxy platform. It also supports integration with other DevOps tools, such as Git, Jenkins, and Docker. Apache Maven also has a strong community and ecosystem, focused specifically on Java projects, with a rich repository of plugins available through the Maven Central Repository.
Workflow and Configuration Management: Ansible follows a push-based model, where the control machine initiates connections to the target machines and pushes the required configurations and tasks. On the other hand, Apache Maven operates based on a pull-based model, where the build process is initiated on the developer's machine or build server, pulling the required dependencies and resources from centralized repositories.
Build Lifecycle: Apache Maven has a well-defined build lifecycle with phases such as compilation, testing, packaging, and deployment. Each phase can be customized through plugin configurations, allowing developers to define specific actions to be executed at different stages of the build process. Ansible, being a configuration management tool, does not have a predefined build lifecycle but focuses more on the configuration and management of system resources.

Ansible vs Apache Maven

Overview

Ansible vs Apache Maven: What are the differences?