Puppet Labs vs Webmin

Overview

Puppet Labs

Stacks1.3K

Followers793

Votes227

GitHub Stars7.7K

Forks2.2K

Webmin

Stacks72

Followers163

Votes13

GitHub Stars5.3K

Forks727

Puppet Labs vs Webmin: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In this article, we will compare and provide the key differences between Puppet Labs and Webmin, two popular software tools used for system administration. We will highlight the specific differences between these tools, focusing on their functionalities and capabilities.

Scalability: Puppet Labs offers a highly scalable solution, making it suitable for managing a large number of servers and configurations. It adopts a client-server architecture, where the Puppet master manages multiple Puppet agents across different systems. On the other hand, Webmin is more suitable for smaller scale deployments, typically managing a single server or a small cluster of servers.
Infrastructure as Code: Puppet Labs focuses on the concept of "Infrastructure as Code" by allowing administrators to define desired system configurations in Puppet's declarative language. These configurations are then automatically enforced by Puppet agents, ensuring consistency across the infrastructure. Webmin, however, uses a web-based interface to provide a graphical user interface for system administration tasks, making it more accessible to less technical users.
Extensibility: Puppet Labs provides extensive support for developing custom modules and plugins, allowing users to extend Puppet's functionality according to their specific requirements. This enables administrators to integrate Puppet with other tools and automate complex tasks efficiently. In contrast, Webmin offers a wide variety of pre-built modules for managing different aspects of the system, but the flexibility to develop custom modules is more limited.
Configuration Management: Puppet Labs focuses primarily on configuration management, allowing administrators to define and enforce system configurations across multiple servers. It provides a centralized approach to manage configurations and ensures that any deviations are corrected automatically. On the other hand, Webmin offers a more general-purpose system administration interface, providing tools for managing not only configurations but also services, users, and other aspects of the system.
Community and Support: Puppet Labs has a large and active community with extensive documentation, forums, and resources available. This community provides a wealth of knowledge and support for Puppet users. Webmin also has a supportive community, but it is comparatively smaller in scale. However, Webmin has an advantage in terms of user-friendly interface and ease of use, making it a popular choice among less experienced administrators.
Integration with Ecosystem: Puppet Labs integrates well with other tools in the DevOps ecosystem, such as version control systems like Git or continuous integration servers like Jenkins. This allows for seamless integration of Puppet configurations into the development and release pipeline. Webmin, on the other hand, is more focused on system administration tasks and does not have as many built-in integrations with external tools.

In summary, Puppet Labs offers a highly scalable and powerful solution for configuration management in large-scale deployments. It promotes the concept of Infrastructure as Code and provides extensive flexibility and integrations. Webmin, on the other hand, is more user-friendly and suitable for smaller-scale deployments where ease of use and a graphical interface are prioritized over extensive customization and scalability.

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Advice on Puppet Labs, Webmin

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

Puppet Labs	Webmin
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.	It is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. It removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files.
Insight- Puppet Enterprise's event inspector gives immediate and actionable insight into your environment, showing you what changed, where and how by classes, nodes and resources.;Discovery- Puppet Enterprise delivers a dynamic and fully-pluggable discovery service that allows you to take advantage of any data source or real-time query results to quickly locate, identify and group cloud nodes.;Provisioning- Automatically provision and configure bare metal, virtual, and private or public cloud capacity, all from a single pane. Save time getting your cloud projects off the ground by reusing the same configuration modules you set up for your physical deployments.;Configuration Management- Puppet Enterprise's declarative, model-based approach automates repetitive tasks and eliminates configuration drift. You define the desired state of your infrastructure, and Puppet Enterprise enforces this state, freeing you to work on tougher projects.;Orchestration- Quickly deploy critical updates, like security patches, across hundreds of servers in seconds, or proactively initiate Puppet runs to update configurations and report changes. Puppet Enterprise allows you to orchestrate controlled, multi-step operations to targeted collections of nodes, giving you complete control over infrastructure changes.;Reporting- Get visibility into your infrastructure, browse resources, and view reports that help you manage your configuration. Puppet Enterprise provides node hardware and software inventory, Puppet run change reports, and node configuration graphs via the product's console or 3rd party APIs.	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 7.7K	GitHub Stars 5.3K
GitHub Forks 2.2K	GitHub Forks 727
Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 72
Followers 793	Followers 163
Votes 227	Votes 13
Pros & Cons
Pros 52 Devops 44 Automate it 26 Reusable components 21 Dynamic and idempotent server configuration 18 Great community Cons 3 Steep learning curve 1 Customs types idempotence	Pros 3 Review real-time resources (cpu, mem, stg, proc) 2 Virtualmin 2 Easy to use 2 Free 1 Modify applications
Integrations
No integrations available	MySQL Fedora Debian

What are some alternatives to Puppet Labs, Webmin?

Ansible

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

cPanel

It is an industry leading hosting platform with world-class support. It is globally empowering hosting providers through fully-automated point-and-click hosting platform by hosting-centric professionals

Mina

Mina works really fast because it's a deploy Bash script generator. It generates an entire procedure as a Bash script and runs it remotely in the server. Compare this to the likes of Vlad or Capistrano, where each command is run separately on their own SSH sessions. Mina only creates one SSH session per deploy, minimizing the SSH connection overhead.

Puppet Bolt

It is an open source orchestration tool that automates the manual work it takes to maintain your infrastructure. Use it to automate tasks that you perform on an as-needed basis or as part of a greater orchestration workflow.

Related Comparisons

Puppet Labs vs Webmin: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Scalability: Puppet Labs offers a highly scalable solution, making it suitable for managing a large number of servers and configurations. It adopts a client-server architecture, where the Puppet master manages multiple Puppet agents across different systems. On the other hand, Webmin is more suitable for smaller scale deployments, typically managing a single server or a small cluster of servers.
Infrastructure as Code: Puppet Labs focuses on the concept of "Infrastructure as Code" by allowing administrators to define desired system configurations in Puppet's declarative language. These configurations are then automatically enforced by Puppet agents, ensuring consistency across the infrastructure. Webmin, however, uses a web-based interface to provide a graphical user interface for system administration tasks, making it more accessible to less technical users.
Extensibility: Puppet Labs provides extensive support for developing custom modules and plugins, allowing users to extend Puppet's functionality according to their specific requirements. This enables administrators to integrate Puppet with other tools and automate complex tasks efficiently. In contrast, Webmin offers a wide variety of pre-built modules for managing different aspects of the system, but the flexibility to develop custom modules is more limited.
Configuration Management: Puppet Labs focuses primarily on configuration management, allowing administrators to define and enforce system configurations across multiple servers. It provides a centralized approach to manage configurations and ensures that any deviations are corrected automatically. On the other hand, Webmin offers a more general-purpose system administration interface, providing tools for managing not only configurations but also services, users, and other aspects of the system.
Community and Support: Puppet Labs has a large and active community with extensive documentation, forums, and resources available. This community provides a wealth of knowledge and support for Puppet users. Webmin also has a supportive community, but it is comparatively smaller in scale. However, Webmin has an advantage in terms of user-friendly interface and ease of use, making it a popular choice among less experienced administrators.
Integration with Ecosystem: Puppet Labs integrates well with other tools in the DevOps ecosystem, such as version control systems like Git or continuous integration servers like Jenkins. This allows for seamless integration of Puppet configurations into the development and release pipeline. Webmin, on the other hand, is more focused on system administration tasks and does not have as many built-in integrations with external tools.

Puppet Labs vs Webmin

Overview