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Ansible vs Apache Mesos: What are the differences?
# Key Differences between Ansible and Apache Mesos
**1. Architecture**: Ansible is a configuration management tool that follows a master-slave architecture where the controlling machine communicates with remote nodes for automation tasks. On the other hand, Apache Mesos is a distributed systems kernel that uses a master-slave architecture for resource management and scheduling tasks across a cluster of machines.
**2. Use Case**: Ansible is used primarily for automating infrastructure configuration and application deployment, making it suitable for DevOps tasks. In contrast, Apache Mesos is designed for large-scale distributed applications and frameworks, providing resource sharing and isolation capabilities for containerized workloads.
**3. Scalability**: Ansible is more suitable for managing smaller to medium-sized infrastructures due to its agentless nature and limited scalability. Apache Mesos, on the other hand, is built for massive scalability, allowing it to manage thousands of nodes and support complex cloud-native applications effectively.
**4. Orchestration**: Ansible focuses on orchestration and automation of tasks, ensuring that configuration changes are applied consistently across multiple servers. In comparison, Apache Mesos offers advanced orchestration capabilities for managing the deployment and scaling of distributed applications in a cluster environment.
**5. Community Support**: Ansible has a large and active community with extensive documentation and modules for various technologies, making it easier for users to get started and troubleshoot issues. Apache Mesos also has a supportive community backing its development, but it targets a more specialized audience due to its focus on data center resource management.
**6. Extensibility**: Ansible can be easily extended through custom modules and plugins, allowing users to tailor the tool to their specific automation needs. Apache Mesos, on the other hand, provides a flexible framework for building distributed systems and supports various schedulers and container orchestration platforms for enhanced functionality.
In Summary, Ansible is ideal for automating infrastructure tasks and application deployments in small to medium-sized environments, while Apache Mesos excels in managing large-scale distributed applications with high scalability and advanced orchestration capabilities.
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 Apache Mesos
- Easy scaling21
- Web UI6
- Fault-Tolerant2
- Elastic Distributed System1
- High-Available1
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Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous8
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2
Cons of Apache Mesos
- Not for long term1
- Depends on Zookeeper1