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Amazon EC2 Container Service vs Ansible: What are the differences?
Introduction:
- Orchestration vs Configuration Management: Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) is primarily focused on orchestration and management of containerized applications, while Ansible is a configuration management tool that automates the provisioning and configuration of servers.
- Scalability: ECS is deeply integrated with AWS services, allowing for seamless scalability based on demand by leveraging features like auto-scaling groups. On the other hand, Ansible's scalability is limited by the capacity of the underlying infrastructure as it directly manages individual servers.
- Infrastructure as Code: Ansible uses YAML-based playbooks to define the desired state of the infrastructure, promoting Infrastructure as Code practices. In contrast, ECS relies on JSON-based task definitions for defining containerized applications and does not emphasize infrastructure configuration.
- Agentless vs Agent-based: Ansible follows an agentless architecture where tasks are executed over SSH, making it easier to manage a large number of servers without deploying agents. ECS, being a container management service, requires the deployment of agents on each EC2 instance to communicate with the ECS cluster, adding to the management overhead.
- Flexibility: Ansible offers flexibility in managing various types of infrastructure components, including servers, networks, and cloud resources. While ECS excels in managing containerized workloads, it may lack the versatility needed for managing diverse infrastructure environments.
- Cost Structure: ECS is a fully managed service by AWS, which may result in potentially higher operational costs compared to self-hosted solutions like Ansible. Organizations using Ansible enjoy more control over cost optimization strategies based on their specific usage patterns and requirements.
In Summary, Amazon ECS Container Service and Ansible differ in their focus on orchestration vs configuration management, scalability, infrastructure as code practices, agent-based architecture, flexibility in managing infrastructure components, and cost structure.
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
If you want to integrate your cluster and control end to end your pipeline with AWS tools like ECR and Code Pipeline your best option is ECS using a EC2 instance. There are pros and cons but it's easier to integrate using cloud formation templates and visual UI for approvals, etc. ECS is free, you need to pay only for the EC2 instance but unfortunately, it is not standard then you cannot use standard tools to see and manage your Kubernetes. EKS in the other hand uses standard Kubernates definitions but you need to pay for the service and also for the EC2 instance(s) you have in your cluster.
Pros of Amazon EC2 Container Service
- Backed by amazon100
- Familiar to ec272
- Cluster based53
- Simple API42
- Iam roles26
- Scheduler7
- Cluster management7
- Programmatic Control7
- Container-enabled applications4
- Socker support4
- No additional cost2
- Easy to use and cheap1
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
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Cons of Amazon EC2 Container Service
Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous8
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2
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