Ansible vs Octopus Deploy

Overview

Ansible

Stacks19.5K

Followers15.6K

Votes1.3K

GitHub Stars66.9K

Forks24.1K

Octopus Deploy

Stacks407

Followers493

Votes118

Ansible vs Octopus Deploy: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Ansible and Octopus Deploy, highlighting the key differences between the two.

Installation and Architecture: Ansible is a server-agentless configuration management tool, while Octopus Deploy is a server-agent based deployment automation tool. Ansible uses SSH or WinRM to connect to remote servers, while Octopus Deploy requires agents to be installed on target machines. Ansible follows a push-based model, where the controller pushes configurations to the target machines, while Octopus Deploy follows a pull-based model, where agents pull deployments from the Octopus Server.
Supported Platforms: Ansible is platform-agnostic and can be used to manage and configure a wide range of operating systems and platforms. It supports Linux, Unix, macOS, and Windows. On the other hand, Octopus Deploy primarily focuses on deploying applications to Windows servers, with limited support for Linux and macOS.
Configuration Management: Ansible provides a declarative approach to configuration management, where desired states are declared and Ansible takes care of reaching those states. It uses YAML-based playbooks to define tasks and configurations. Octopus Deploy, on the other hand, focuses more on deployment management than configuration management. It allows for more flexibility in defining deployment processes and workflows, but lacks the extensive configuration management capabilities of Ansible.
Scalability and Orchestration: Ansible is designed to work at a large scale and supports orchestrating and managing configurations across thousands of servers. It provides advanced features like dynamic inventory, parallel execution, and rolling updates to handle large-scale deployments efficiently. Octopus Deploy, on the other hand, is more suited for smaller to medium-sized deployments and may not be as scalable as Ansible for large-scale environments.
Integration and Ecosystem: Ansible has a large and active community, with a vast ecosystem of modules, plugins, and integrations available. It can be easily integrated with other DevOps tools and has extensive support for various cloud platforms, containerization technologies, and version control systems. Octopus Deploy has a smaller community and ecosystem compared to Ansible, with limited integrations and plugins available.
Pricing and Licensing: Ansible is an open-source tool under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is available for free. It also offers a commercial version, Ansible Tower, with additional features and enterprise support. Octopus Deploy is a commercial tool and follows a subscription-based licensing model. It offers different pricing tiers based on the number of target deployment targets and users.

In summary, Ansible is an agentless configuration management tool with broader platform support, extensive configuration management capabilities, and a larger ecosystem. Octopus Deploy, on the other hand, is a deployment automation tool with focus on Windows deployments, flexible deployment workflows, and a more limited ecosystem.

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Advice on Ansible, Octopus Deploy

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.

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Detailed Comparison

Ansible	Octopus Deploy
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.	Octopus Deploy helps teams to manage releases, automate deployments, and operate applications with automated runbooks. It's free for small teams.
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.	Deploy on-premises or to the cloud, securely;.NET, Java, PHP, Node, Ruby;Full API support;Approvals and manual intervention;Enable self-service deployments;Installs in minutes;Integrates with your build server;Free for small teams
Statistics
GitHub Stars 66.9K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 24.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 19.5K	Stacks 407
Followers 15.6K	Followers 493
Votes 1.3K	Votes 118
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 Bloated 3 Backward compatibility	Pros 30 Powerful 25 Simplicity 20 Easy to learn 17 .Net oriented 14 Easy to manage releases and rollback Cons 4 Poor UI 2 Management of Config 2 Config & variables not versioned (e.g. in git)
Integrations
Nexmo Stackdriver VMware vSphere Docker OpenStack Amazon EC2 Rackspace Cloud Servers Google Compute Engine New Relic PagerDuty	Jenkins Azure DevOps TeamCity Jira Appveyor Bamboo

What are some alternatives to Ansible, Octopus Deploy?

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.

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

AWS CodeDeploy

AWS CodeDeploy is a service that automates code deployments to Amazon EC2 instances. AWS CodeDeploy makes it easier for you to rapidly release new features, helps you avoid downtime during deployment, and handles the complexity of updating your applications.

Distelli

Build, test, and deploy your code from GitHub and BitBucket (or no repository at all) to any server in the world regardless of provider. Distelli customers iterate and ship faster with complete transparency.

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 Octopus Deploy: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Ansible and Octopus Deploy, highlighting the key differences between the two.

Installation and Architecture: Ansible is a server-agentless configuration management tool, while Octopus Deploy is a server-agent based deployment automation tool. Ansible uses SSH or WinRM to connect to remote servers, while Octopus Deploy requires agents to be installed on target machines. Ansible follows a push-based model, where the controller pushes configurations to the target machines, while Octopus Deploy follows a pull-based model, where agents pull deployments from the Octopus Server.
Supported Platforms: Ansible is platform-agnostic and can be used to manage and configure a wide range of operating systems and platforms. It supports Linux, Unix, macOS, and Windows. On the other hand, Octopus Deploy primarily focuses on deploying applications to Windows servers, with limited support for Linux and macOS.
Configuration Management: Ansible provides a declarative approach to configuration management, where desired states are declared and Ansible takes care of reaching those states. It uses YAML-based playbooks to define tasks and configurations. Octopus Deploy, on the other hand, focuses more on deployment management than configuration management. It allows for more flexibility in defining deployment processes and workflows, but lacks the extensive configuration management capabilities of Ansible.
Scalability and Orchestration: Ansible is designed to work at a large scale and supports orchestrating and managing configurations across thousands of servers. It provides advanced features like dynamic inventory, parallel execution, and rolling updates to handle large-scale deployments efficiently. Octopus Deploy, on the other hand, is more suited for smaller to medium-sized deployments and may not be as scalable as Ansible for large-scale environments.
Integration and Ecosystem: Ansible has a large and active community, with a vast ecosystem of modules, plugins, and integrations available. It can be easily integrated with other DevOps tools and has extensive support for various cloud platforms, containerization technologies, and version control systems. Octopus Deploy has a smaller community and ecosystem compared to Ansible, with limited integrations and plugins available.
Pricing and Licensing: Ansible is an open-source tool under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is available for free. It also offers a commercial version, Ansible Tower, with additional features and enterprise support. Octopus Deploy is a commercial tool and follows a subscription-based licensing model. It offers different pricing tiers based on the number of target deployment targets and users.

Ansible vs Octopus Deploy

Overview

Ansible vs Octopus Deploy: What are the differences?