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Ansible vs Snap CI: What are the differences?
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; Snap CI: Build, test, and deploy software faster with Snap's continuous integration and deployment tool. Snap CI is a cloud-based continuous integration & continuous deployment tool with powerful deployment pipelines. Integrates seamlessly with GitHub and provides fast feedback so you can deploy with ease.
Ansible belongs to "Server Configuration and Automation" category of the tech stack, while Snap CI can be primarily classified under "Continuous Integration".
Some of the features offered by Ansible are:
- 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.
On the other hand, Snap CI provides the following key features:
- Deployment Options - Heroku, AWS
- System Libraries - Your build runs on a RedHat 6-compatible system with commonly required libraries
- Customization Options - In addition to all that we support out of the box, we offer you the chance to customize your build extensively.
"Agentless" is the top reason why over 251 developers like Ansible, while over 13 developers mention "Github integration" as the leading cause for choosing Snap CI.
Ansible is an open source tool with 37.8K GitHub stars and 15.8K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Ansible's open source repository on GitHub.
DigitalOcean, 9GAG, and Hootsuite are some of the popular companies that use Ansible, whereas Snap CI is used by Hazeorid, Elerna, and Firecracker. Ansible has a broader approval, being mentioned in 955 company stacks & 578 developers stacks; compared to Snap CI, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 3 developer stacks.
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 Snap CI
- Github integration14
- Easy setup13
- Multi-stage pipelines11
- Continuous deployment10
- Easy ui9
- Great customer support9
- Automatic branch tracking8
- Automated and manual deploys7
- Console debugging5
- Pull request integration5
- Continuous delivery4
- Free for open-source3
- Better PR support2
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Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous8
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2
Cons of Snap CI
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