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Ansible vs Capistrano: What are the differences?

Introduction

Ansible and Capistrano are both popular frameworks used for automation and deployment in web development. While they share some similarities, they also have key differences that set them apart.

  1. Configuration Ansible operates on the principle of infrastructure as code and adopts a highly declarative approach. It uses YAML files to define the desired state of the infrastructure and handles the configuration management of various systems. Capistrano, on the other hand, is designed primarily for deploying Ruby on Rails applications and follows a more procedural approach, relying on scripts written in Ruby to handle configuration and deployment tasks.

  2. Language Ansible is agentless and uses SSH to connect to target systems, allowing it to manage various types of infrastructure regardless of the underlying operating system or programming language. In contrast, Capistrano primarily targets Ruby on Rails applications and is tightly coupled with the Ruby programming language. It utilizes SSH and custom SSH multiplexing to execute commands on remote servers.

  3. Community and Ecosystem Ansible boasts a larger and more diverse community compared to Capistrano. It has an extensive list of community-contributed modules and roles, making it versatile in managing different aspects of infrastructure. Capistrano, being more specific to web application deployment, has a smaller community with a focus on Ruby on Rails.

  4. Ease of Use Ansible aims to have a low learning curve and emphasizes simplicity. Its configuration files are human-readable and easy to understand, making it more accessible to beginners. Capistrano, although straightforward for Ruby developers, may require a higher level of familiarity with the Ruby ecosystem and syntax.

  5. Flexibility Ansible is known for its ability to manage a wide range of systems, including servers, network devices, and cloud services. It also supports complex orchestration and has integrations with popular tools and platforms. While Capistrano can handle more than Ruby on Rails applications, it is primarily focused on deploying web applications built with Ruby.

  6. Deployment Strategy Capistrano follows a rolling deployment strategy, which deploys the new version of the application to one server at a time, reducing downtime and allowing for easy rollback. Ansible, however, provides flexibility in choosing the deployment strategy based on the project's requirements. It can support rolling deployments and other strategies like blue-green or canary deployments.

In summary, Ansible takes a more generic and versatile approach to infrastructure automation and configuration management, with broad language and platform support, a large community, and a focus on simplicity. Capistrano, on the other hand, is specifically tailored for Ruby on Rails application deployment, leveraging Ruby's strengths and providing a straightforward deployment process.

Advice on Ansible and Capistrano
Needs advice
on
AnsibleAnsible
and
RundeckRundeck

We have a lot of operations running using Rundeck (including deployments) and we also have various roles created in Ansible for infrastructure creation, which we execute using Rundeck. Rundeck we are using a community edition. Since we are already using Rundeck for executing the Ansible role, need an advice. What difference will it make if we replace Rundeck with Ansible Tower? Advantages and Disadvantages? We are using Jenkins to call Rundeck Job, same will be used for Ansible Tower if we replace Rundeck.

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Replies (1)
Denis Gukov

I never use Tower, but I can recommend Ansible Semaphore as alternative to Rundeck. It is lightweight, easy to use and tailored for work with Ansible.

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Rogério R. Alcântara
Needs advice
on
AnsibleAnsibleChefChef
and
Puppet LabsPuppet Labs
in

Personal Dotfiles management

Given that they are all “configuration management” tools - meaning they are designed to deploy, configure and manage servers - what would be the simplest - and yet robust - solution to manage personal dotfiles - for n00bs.

Ideally, I reckon, it should:

  • be containerized (Docker?)
  • be versionable (Git)
  • ensure idempotency
  • allow full automation (tests, CI/CD, etc.)
  • be fully recoverable (Linux/ macOS)
  • be easier to setup/manage (as much as possible)

Does it make sense?

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Replies (3)
terry chay
Principal Engineer at RaiseMe · | 9 upvotes · 63.6K views
Recommends
on
AnsibleAnsible

I recommend whatever you are most comfortable with/whatever might already be installed in the system. Note that, for personal dotfiles, it does not need to be containerized or have full automation/testing. It just needs to handle multiple OS and platform and be idempotent. Git will handle the heavy lifting. Note that you'll have to separate out certain files like the private SSH keys and write your CM so that it will pull it from another store or assist in manually importing them.

I personally use Ansible since it is a serverless design and is in Python, which I prefer to Ruby. Saltstack was too new when I started to port my dotfile management scripts from shell into a configuration management tool. I think any of the above is fine.

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Recommends
on
SaltSalt

You should check out SaltStack. It's a lot more powerful than Puppet, Chef, & Ansible. If not Salt, then I would go Ansible. But stay away from Puppet & Chef. 10+ year user of Puppet, and 2+ year user of Chef.

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Attila Fulop
Management Advisor at artkonekt · | 3 upvotes · 26.5K views
Recommends

Chef is a definite no-go for me. I learned it the hard way (ie. got a few tasks in a prod system) and it took quite a lot to grasp it on an acceptable level. Ansible in turn is much more straightforward and much easier to test.

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Needs advice
on
AnsibleAnsibleChefChef
and
Puppet LabsPuppet Labs

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.

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Replies (2)
Recommends
on
AnsibleAnsible

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.

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Gabriel Pa
Recommends
on
KubernetesKubernetes
at

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

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Decisions about Ansible and Capistrano
Hendrik Halkow

Terraform provides a cloud-provider agnostic way of provisioning cloud infrastructure while AWS CloudFormation is limited to AWS.

Pulumi is a great tool that provides similar features as Terraform, including advanced features like policy and cost management.

We see that Terraform has great support in the cloud community. For most cloud services we use, there is an official Terraform provider. We also believe in the declarative model of HCL, which is why we chose Terraform over Pulumi. However, we still keep an eye on Pulumi's progress.

Ansible is great for provisioning software and configuration within virtual machines, but we don't think that Ansible is the right tool for provisioning cloud infrastructure since it's built around the assumption that there is an inventory of remote machines. Terraform also supports more services that we use than Ansible.

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Pros of Ansible
Pros of Capistrano
  • 284
    Agentless
  • 210
    Great configuration
  • 199
    Simple
  • 176
    Powerful
  • 155
    Easy to learn
  • 69
    Flexible
  • 55
    Doesn't get in the way of getting s--- done
  • 35
    Makes sense
  • 30
    Super efficient and flexible
  • 27
    Powerful
  • 11
    Dynamic Inventory
  • 9
    Backed by Red Hat
  • 7
    Works with AWS
  • 6
    Cloud Oriented
  • 6
    Easy to maintain
  • 4
    Vagrant provisioner
  • 4
    Simple and powerful
  • 4
    Multi language
  • 4
    Simple
  • 4
    Because SSH
  • 4
    Procedural or declarative, or both
  • 4
    Easy
  • 3
    Consistency
  • 2
    Well-documented
  • 2
    Masterless
  • 2
    Debugging is simple
  • 2
    Merge hash to get final configuration similar to hiera
  • 2
    Fast as hell
  • 1
    Manage any OS
  • 1
    Work on windows, but difficult to manage
  • 1
    Certified Content
  • 121
    Automated deployment with several custom recipes
  • 63
    Simple
  • 23
    Ruby
  • 11
    Release-folders with symlinks
  • 9
    Multistage deployment
  • 2
    Cryptic syntax
  • 2
    Integrated rollback
  • 1
    Supports aws

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Cons of Ansible
Cons of Capistrano
  • 8
    Dangerous
  • 5
    Hard to install
  • 3
    Doesn't Run on Windows
  • 3
    Bloated
  • 3
    Backward compatibility
  • 2
    No immutable infrastructure
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    What is 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.

    What is 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.

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    What companies use Ansible?
    What companies use Capistrano?
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    What are some alternatives to Ansible and Capistrano?
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    Jenkins
    In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.
    See all alternatives