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Ansible vs StackStorm: What are the differences?
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; StackStorm: Open Source IFTTT for Ops: event-driven automation, security responses, auto-remediation with workflow engine & ChatOps. StackStorm is a platform for integration and automation across services and tools. It ties together your existing infrastructure and application environment so you can more easily automate that environment -- with a particular focus on taking actions in response to events.
Ansible can be classified as a tool in the "Server Configuration and Automation" category, while StackStorm is grouped under "Remote Server Task Execution".
Some of the features offered by Ansible are:
- 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.
On the other hand, StackStorm provides the following key features:
- Automations tie events to actions you’d like to take, using a rules engine and, if you want, comprehensive workflow. Automations are your operational patterns summarized as code.
- StackStorm automations work either by starting with your existing scripts – just add simple meta data – or by authoring the automations within StackStorm.
- Automations are the heart of StackStorm – they allow you to share operational patterns, boost productivity, and automate away the routine.
"Agentless" is the primary reason why developers consider Ansible over the competitors, whereas "Auto-remediation" was stated as the key factor in picking StackStorm.
Ansible and StackStorm are both open source tools. It seems that Ansible with 38.2K GitHub stars and 16K forks on GitHub has more adoption than StackStorm with 3.32K GitHub stars and 439 GitHub forks.
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 StackStorm
- Auto-remediation7
- Integrations5
- Automation4
- Complex workflows4
- Open source3
- Beautiful UI2
- ChatOps2
- Python2
- Extensibility1
- Slack1
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Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous8
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2
Cons of StackStorm
- Complexity3
- There are not enough sources of information1
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