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Ansible vs NixOS: What are the differences?
Key Differences between Ansible and NixOS
Introduction
Ansible and NixOS are both powerful tools in the realm of configuration management and infrastructure automation. However, they have several key differences that set them apart. In this article, we will explore and outline these differences.
Architecture: Ansible is agentless and follows a client-server model where the control machine pushes configurations to the target hosts over SSH. On the other hand, NixOS is a declarative Linux distribution where the configuration is described in a single file and applied to the entire system.
Package Management: Ansible relies on existing package managers to install and manage software packages on the target hosts. It can interact with package managers like apt, yum, etc. NixOS, on the other hand, employs its own package manager called Nix, which allows for atomic upgrades and rollbacks and ensures that all dependencies are managed consistently.
Idempotency: Ansible primarily focuses on idempotency, which means that running the same configuration multiple times results in the same outcome without causing any undesired side effects. NixOS takes this even further by enforcing determinism, where its declarative nature ensures that the system state is always consistent and reproducible.
Configuration Language: Ansible uses YAML as its configuration language, which is known for its simplicity and human-readability. In contrast, NixOS leverages the Nix expression language, which is a functional language designed for configuration and package description, allowing for more advanced and expressive configurations.
Community and Ecosystem: Ansible has a vast and thriving community with a wide range of community-developed roles and modules available for various tasks. This extensive ecosystem makes it easier to automate common infrastructure management tasks. NixOS, although gaining popularity, has a smaller community and a more focused ecosystem due to its relatively niche use case as a Linux distribution.
System Updates: Ansible provides facilities to perform rolling updates, where a subset of hosts can be updated while the rest of the infrastructure remains operational. NixOS, being a complete operating system, allows for atomic system upgrades where the entire system is updated as a whole, ensuring that the system remains consistent during the update process.
In Summary, Ansible and NixOS differ in their architecture, package management approach, focus on idempotency and determinism, choice of configuration language, community and ecosystem, and system update 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 NixOS
- Atomic upgrades2
- Declarative system configuration2
- Multi-user package management2
- Reproducible environment2
- Rollback for any changes2
- Cloud Agnostic Deployments1
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Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous8
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2