Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
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
- 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 Spinnaker
- Mature9
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous7
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2
Cons of Spinnaker
- No GitOps2
- Configuration time1
- Management overhead1
- Ease of use1