Ansible vs Docker

Overview

Docker

Stacks194.2K

Followers143.8K

Votes3.9K

Ansible

Stacks19.5K

Followers15.6K

Votes1.3K

GitHub Stars66.9K

Forks24.1K

Ansible vs Docker: What are the differences?

Deployment Methodology: Ansible is a configuration management tool that automates provisioning, configuration, and orchestration of servers, while Docker is a containerization platform that packages applications and their dependencies into a standardized unit for software development. The key difference here is that Ansible focuses on configuring and managing infrastructure, while Docker focuses on isolating applications within containers.
Resource Utilization: Ansible communicates with hosts over SSH and executes tasks sequentially, which can lead to resource-heavy operations if managing a large number of servers. On the other hand, Docker uses lightweight containers that share the host OS kernel, leading to efficient resource utilization and scalability.
State Management: Ansible follows a declarative approach where the desired state of the system is defined, and Ansible ensures the system matches that state. Docker, however, is more of an imperative system where commands are given to carry out specific tasks in containers.
Portability: Docker containers are highly portable and can run on any system with Docker installed, providing consistency across different environments. Ansible playbooks are specific to the Ansible infrastructure and may require adjustments when deploying across diverse systems.
Networking: Docker provides networking features built into the platform, allowing containers to communicate with each other and the outside world. While Ansible can manage network configurations on servers, it does not have the built-in networking capabilities that Docker offers.
Focus Area: Ansible primarily focuses on automating repetitive tasks for system administrators and IT professionals, making infrastructure management more efficient. Docker, on the other hand, is geared towards developers and DevOps teams, streamlining the development, testing, and deployment of applications in a consistent environment.

In Summary, the key differences between Ansible and Docker lie in their deployment methodology, resource utilization, state management, portability, networking capabilities, and focus area.

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Advice on Docker, Ansible

Eddy

Pharmacist | CEO | Student at Prescripz TeleHealth

Aug 10, 2020

Needs advice

I am looking for an easy to use platform or VPS hosting service that will allow me to deploy additional VPS at will and quickly install the OS as well.

I am also looking for a backend software that allows team messaging (chat service, video, and audio) that can be self-hosted and is free. Also, an easy to use webRTC library would be great too!

15.6k views15.6k

Comments

Florian

IT DevOp at Agitos GmbH

Oct 22, 2019

Decided

lxd/lxc and Docker aren't congruent so this comparison needs a more detailed look; but in short I can say: the lxd-integrated administration of storage including zfs with its snapshot capabilities as well as the system container (multi-process) approach of lxc vs. the limited single-process container approach of Docker is the main reason I chose lxd over Docker.

483k views483k

Comments

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

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Docker	Ansible
The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere	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.
Integrated developer tools; open, portable images; shareable, reusable apps; framework-aware builds; standardized templates; multi-environment support; remote registry management; simple setup for Docker and Kubernetes; certified Kubernetes; application templates; enterprise controls; secure software supply chain; industry-leading container runtime; image scanning; access controls; image signing; caching and mirroring; image lifecycle; policy-based image promotion	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.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 66.9K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 24.1K
Stacks 194.2K	Stacks 19.5K
Followers 143.8K	Followers 15.6K
Votes 3.9K	Votes 1.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros 823 Rapid integration and build up 692 Isolation 521 Open source 505 Testability and reproducibility 460 Lightweight Cons 8 New versions == broken features 6 Documentation not always in sync 6 Unreliable networking 4 Moves quickly 3 Not Secure	Pros 284 Agentless 210 Great configuration 199 Simple 176 Powerful 155 Easy to learn Cons 8 Dangerous 5 Hard to install 3 Backward compatibility 3 Bloated 3 Doesn't Run on Windows
Integrations
Java Docker Compose VirtualBox Linux Amazon EC2 Container Service Docker Swarm boot2docker Kubernetes Docker Machine Vagrant	Nexmo Stackdriver VMware vSphere OpenStack Amazon EC2 Rackspace Cloud Servers Google Compute Engine New Relic PagerDuty Twilio

What are some alternatives to Docker, Ansible?

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.

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.

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.

LXD

LXD isn't a rewrite of LXC, in fact it's building on top of LXC to provide a new, better user experience. Under the hood, LXD uses LXC through liblxc and its Go binding to create and manage the containers. It's basically an alternative to LXC's tools and distribution template system with the added features that come from being controllable over the network.

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

LXC

LXC is a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. Through a powerful API and simple tools, it lets Linux users easily create and manage system or application containers.

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

Related Comparisons

Ansible vs Docker: What are the differences?

Deployment Methodology: Ansible is a configuration management tool that automates provisioning, configuration, and orchestration of servers, while Docker is a containerization platform that packages applications and their dependencies into a standardized unit for software development. The key difference here is that Ansible focuses on configuring and managing infrastructure, while Docker focuses on isolating applications within containers.
Resource Utilization: Ansible communicates with hosts over SSH and executes tasks sequentially, which can lead to resource-heavy operations if managing a large number of servers. On the other hand, Docker uses lightweight containers that share the host OS kernel, leading to efficient resource utilization and scalability.
State Management: Ansible follows a declarative approach where the desired state of the system is defined, and Ansible ensures the system matches that state. Docker, however, is more of an imperative system where commands are given to carry out specific tasks in containers.
Portability: Docker containers are highly portable and can run on any system with Docker installed, providing consistency across different environments. Ansible playbooks are specific to the Ansible infrastructure and may require adjustments when deploying across diverse systems.
Networking: Docker provides networking features built into the platform, allowing containers to communicate with each other and the outside world. While Ansible can manage network configurations on servers, it does not have the built-in networking capabilities that Docker offers.
Focus Area: Ansible primarily focuses on automating repetitive tasks for system administrators and IT professionals, making infrastructure management more efficient. Docker, on the other hand, is geared towards developers and DevOps teams, streamlining the development, testing, and deployment of applications in a consistent environment.

In Summary, the key differences between Ansible and Docker lie in their deployment methodology, resource utilization, state management, portability, networking capabilities, and focus area.

Ansible vs Docker

Overview