Ansible vs Juju: What are the differences?

Introduction

Ansible and Juju are both popular tools used in software deployment and management. While they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between them that make each tool unique. In this article, we will examine six major differences between Ansible and Juju.

Architecture and Deployment Model: Ansible, which is agentless, follows a push-based deployment model. It uses SSH and requires an Ansible control node to manage the nodes it deploys to. On the other hand, Juju uses a model-driven, declarative approach with a central controller node and agent nodes for deployment.
Orchestration Capabilities: Juju focuses on orchestration and application modeling, allowing for complex deployments and relationships between various services. It offers higher-level abstractions and allows for the creation of reusable Charms (deployment bundles). Ansible, while it provides some level of orchestration, is more focused on configuration management and automation rather than extensive application modeling.
Supported Provisioning and Cloud Integration: Ansible can work with a wide range of cloud providers, virtualization platforms, and bare metal servers, offering more flexibility for infrastructure provisioning. Juju, on the other hand, has tighter integration with Canonical's ecosystem, including support for multi-cloud orchestration with its Juju bundles, making it a preferred choice for deploying applications on Ubuntu and using Canonical's tools.
Language and Learning Curve: Ansible uses a YAML-based syntax, which is considered relatively easy to learn for newcomers and IT administrators. It has a low barrier to entry and doesn't require extensive programming knowledge. Juju, on the other hand, has a more complex syntax and uses the Charm framework, which requires learning a specific set of tools and concepts to create and deploy Charms.
Community and Ecosystem: Ansible has a larger and more diverse community, with a wide range of modules and playbooks available for various tasks. This extensive community support makes it easier to find solutions and troubleshoot issues. Juju, while it has a growing community, has a smaller user base and a more focused ecosystem due to its association with Ubuntu and Canonical.
Integration and Extensibility: Ansible provides a REST API and supports integrating with external tools and existing infrastructure, allowing for seamless integration into existing environments. Juju, on the other hand, is tightly integrated with the Juju controller and agent nodes, and its extensibility is primarily focused on the Charm ecosystem.

In summary, Ansible excels in configuration management, automation, and its support for a wide range of infrastructure, while Juju shines in application orchestration and modeling, particularly for deployments on Ubuntu and with Canonical's tools.

Ansible	Juju
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.	It is an open source, application and service modelling tool from Ubuntu that helps you deploy, manage and scale your applications on any cloud.
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.	Consistent naming; Tagging; Ability to add user-controlled tags to created instances
Statistics
GitHub Stars 66.9K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 24.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 19.5K	Stacks 26
Followers 15.6K	Followers 54
Votes 1.3K	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 284 Agentless 210 Great configuration 199 Simple 176 Powerful 155 Easy to learn Cons 8 Dangerous 5 Hard to install 3 Doesn't Run on Windows 3 Backward compatibility 3 Bloated	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Nexmo Stackdriver VMware vSphere Docker OpenStack Amazon EC2 Rackspace Cloud Servers Google Compute Engine New Relic PagerDuty	Python JavaScript Golang

Ansible vs Juju

Overview

Ansible vs Juju: What are the differences?

Introduction

🔥 Trending in Continuous Deployment on StackShare

Advice on Ansible, Juju

Detailed Comparison

What are some alternatives to Ansible, Juju?

Chef

Terraform

Capistrano

Puppet Labs

Salt

Fabric

AWS OpsWorks

cPanel

Webmin

Mina

Related Comparisons

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana