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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Deployment
  4. Server Configuration And Automation
  5. Ansible vs Selenium

Ansible vs Selenium

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Ansible
Ansible
Stacks19.5K
Followers15.6K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars66.9K
Forks24.1K
Selenium
Selenium
Stacks16.2K
Followers12.6K
Votes527
GitHub Stars33.6K
Forks8.6K

Ansible vs Selenium: What are the differences?

Ansible and Selenium are both automation tools used in software development and operations. However, they have several key differences that set them apart.
  1. Implementation: Ansible is a configuration management tool used for automating the deployment and management of software applications. It uses a declarative approach, where users define the desired state of the system, and Ansible handles the execution of tasks to achieve that state. On the other hand, Selenium is a testing framework primarily used for automating web browsers. It uses a script-based approach, where users write code to interact with web elements and perform actions.

  2. Target Audience: Ansible is mainly targeted towards system administrators and DevOps engineers who manage and deploy software on a large scale. It focuses on infrastructure automation and orchestration. Selenium, on the other hand, is primarily aimed at software testers and developers who need to automate web browser testing. It focuses on functional and regression testing of web applications.

  3. Scope of Automation: Ansible is designed for automating tasks related to system configuration, provisioning, and deployment. It can manage a wide range of systems, including servers, networking devices, and cloud resources. Selenium, on the other hand, is specifically designed for automating web browser interactions. It can simulate user actions like clicking buttons, entering text, and validating web page content.

  4. Language Support: Ansible uses a YAML-based configuration language, which is easy to read and write for system administrators. It also supports running scripts written in languages like Python and PowerShell. Selenium primarily supports scripting in languages like Java, Python, C#, and Ruby. This allows developers to choose a language they are comfortable with for writing test scripts.

  5. Execution Mode: Ansible runs tasks in a push-based model, where the control node sends commands to the target nodes over SSH and executes them remotely. It allows for parallel execution and can manage multiple nodes simultaneously. Selenium, on the other hand, runs tests in a script-based model, where the test code is executed sequentially by controlling the web browser instance.

In Summary, Ansible is a configuration management tool focused on infrastructure automation, while Selenium is a testing framework for web browser automation. Ansible uses a declarative approach, targets system administrators and DevOps engineers, and supports a wide range of systems. Selenium uses a script-based approach, targets software testers and developers, and focuses on automating web browser interactions.

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Advice on Ansible, Selenium

Shivam
Shivam

Mar 5, 2020

Needs advice

we are having one web application developed in Reacts.js. in the application, we have only 4 to 5 pages that we need to test. I am having experience in selenium with java. Please suggets which tool I should use. and why ............................ ............................ .............................

241k views241k
Comments
Anonymous
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

Ansible
Ansible
Selenium
Selenium

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.

Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Boring web-based administration tasks can (and should!) also be automated as well.

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
66.9K
GitHub Stars
33.6K
GitHub Forks
24.1K
GitHub Forks
8.6K
Stacks
19.5K
Stacks
16.2K
Followers
15.6K
Followers
12.6K
Votes
1.3K
Votes
527
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
  • 177
    Automates browsers
  • 154
    Testing
  • 101
    Essential tool for running test automation
  • 24
    Remote Control
  • 24
    Record-Playback
Cons
  • 8
    Flaky tests
  • 4
    Slow as needs to make browser (even with no gui)
  • 2
    Update browser drivers
Integrations
Nexmo
Nexmo
Stackdriver
Stackdriver
VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere
Docker
Docker
OpenStack
OpenStack
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
New Relic
New Relic
PagerDuty
PagerDuty
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Ansible, Selenium?

BrowserStack

BrowserStack

BrowserStack is the leading test platform built for developers & QAs to expand test coverage, scale & optimize testing with cross-browser, real device cloud, accessibility, visual testing, test management, and test observability.

Sauce Labs

Sauce Labs

Cloud-based automated testing platform enables developers and QEs to perform functional, JavaScript unit, and manual tests with Selenium or Appium on web and mobile apps. Videos and screenshots for easy debugging. Secure and CI-ready.

Chef

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

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

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 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.

LambdaTest

LambdaTest

LambdaTest platform provides secure, scalable and insightful test orchestration for website, and mobile app testing. Customers at different points in their DevOps lifecycle can leverage Automation and/or Manual testing on LambdaTest.

Karma

Karma

Karma is not a testing framework, nor an assertion library. Karma just launches a HTTP server, and generates the test runner HTML file you probably already know from your favourite testing framework. So for testing purposes you can use pretty much anything you like.

Salt

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.

Playwright

Playwright

It is a Node library to automate the Chromium, WebKit and Firefox browsers with a single API. It enables cross-browser web automation that is ever-green, capable, reliable and fast.

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