Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Ansible vs Capistrano vs Fabric: What are the differences?
## Key Differences between Ansible, Capistrano, and Fabric
Ansible, Capistrano, and Fabric are all popular deployment automation tools, each with its own set of unique features and functionalities. Below are the key differences between the three tools.
1. **Architecture**: Ansible utilizes an agentless architecture, while Capistrano and Fabric both require agents to be installed on the target servers. This difference can impact the ease of deployment and management, as the agentless model in Ansible simplifies the setup process and reduces the overhead on target servers.
2. **Language**: Capistrano is primarily written in Ruby, making it more suitable for Ruby-centric environments, whereas Fabric is written in Python, which is a better choice for Python developers. Ansible, on the other hand, uses YAML for configuration management, providing a more human-readable and easy-to-understand syntax for defining playbooks.
3. **Configuration Management**: Ansible is known for its declarative approach to configuration management, allowing users to define the desired state of the system without specifying each step. Capistrano and Fabric, on the other hand, use an imperative style, where users need to define the exact steps to be executed during deployment.
4. **Community Support**: Ansible boasts a large and active community that continually contributes playbooks, roles, and modules to the Ansible Galaxy repository. Capistrano and Fabric also have supportive communities, but they may not be as extensive or well-established as the Ansible community.
5. **Scalability**: Ansible is designed to scale up to manage hundreds or thousands of servers simultaneously, making it a preferred choice for large-scale deployments. While Capistrano and Fabric can also handle multiple servers, Ansible's scalability features make it stand out for enterprise-level deployments.
6. **Extensibility**: Ansible provides a robust plugin system that allows users to extend its functionality through custom modules, plugins, and playbooks. Capistrano and Fabric offer some level of extensibility, but they may not provide the same level of flexibility and customization as Ansible.
In Summary, when choosing between Ansible, Capistrano, and Fabric, consider factors such as architecture, language compatibility, configuration management style, community support, scalability, and extensibility to determine the best tool for your deployment automation needs.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 Capistrano
- Automated deployment with several custom recipes121
- Simple63
- Ruby23
- Release-folders with symlinks11
- Multistage deployment9
- Cryptic syntax2
- Integrated rollback2
- Supports aws1
Pros of Fabric
- Python23
- Simple21
- Low learning curve, from bash script to Python power5
- Installation feedback for Twitter App Cards5
- Easy on maintainance3
- Single config file3
- Installation? pip install fabric... Boom3
- Easy to add any type of job3
- Agentless3
- Easily automate any set system automation2
- Flexible1
- Crash Analytics1
- Backward compatibility1
- Remote sudo execution1
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous8
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2
Cons of Capistrano
Cons of Fabric
Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions
What is Ansible?
What is Capistrano?
What is Fabric?
Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
What companies use Ansible?
Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions
What tools integrate with Ansible?
What tools integrate with Fabric?
Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions
Blog Posts
+14
+13+42
+30
+33
+23+42+37