Ansible vs Serverspec: What are the differences?
What is Ansible? Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine. 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.
What is Serverspec? Tests for your servers configured by Puppet, Chef or anything else. With Serverspec, you can write RSpec tests for checking your servers are configured correctly
Serverspec tests your servers’ actual state by executing command locally, via SSH, via WinRM, via Docker API and so on..
Ansible and Serverspec can be categorized as "Server Configuration and Automation" tools.
Ansible and Serverspec are both open source tools. Ansible with 38.7K GitHub stars and 16.3K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Serverspec with 2.27K GitHub stars and 375 GitHub forks.
DigitalOcean, 9GAG, and Typeform are some of the popular companies that use Ansible, whereas Serverspec is used by Groupe La Poste, HERE Technologies, and Travelex. Ansible has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1262 company stacks & 3244 developers stacks; compared to Serverspec, which is listed in 3 company stacks and 3 developer stacks.
