Overview

AWS OpsWorks

Stacks196

Followers222

Votes51

Puppet Labs

Stacks1.3K

Followers793

Votes227

GitHub Stars7.7K

Forks2.2K

AWS OpsWorks vs Puppet Labs: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Key Differences between AWS OpsWorks and Puppet Labs

Deployment: One key difference between AWS OpsWorks and Puppet Labs is the deployment process. AWS OpsWorks relies on a stack-based approach for deployment where you define infrastructure as a set of layers within a stack, while Puppet Labs follows a node-based approach where you manage individual servers directly.
Integration: Another difference lies in the integration capabilities of the two platforms. AWS OpsWorks integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, making it easier to incorporate additional resources from the AWS ecosystem. On the other hand, Puppet Labs offers more flexibility in terms of integration with various third-party tools and services.
Management Complexity: AWS OpsWorks abstracts much of the underlying infrastructure management, offering a more simplified and streamlined experience for users. Puppet Labs, on the other hand, provides more granular control over configuration management, allowing for deep customization but potentially adding complexity to the management process.
Scalability: When it comes to scalability, AWS OpsWorks provides built-in auto-scaling capabilities that can automatically adjust the number of instances in a layer based on traffic patterns. Puppet Labs, while scalable, requires additional configuration and setup to achieve the same level of dynamic scaling.
Cost: In terms of cost, AWS OpsWorks pricing is based on usage and resources consumed, making it more predictable for users with fluctuating workloads. Puppet Labs, on the other hand, offers both open-source and commercial versions, with potential licensing costs depending on the scale and requirements of the deployment.
Support: AWS OpsWorks offers integrated support from AWS, providing users with direct access to AWS experts and resources for troubleshooting and assistance. Puppet Labs, while offering community support through forums and documentation, also provides commercial support options for users requiring dedicated assistance.

In Summary, the key differences between AWS OpsWorks and Puppet Labs lie in their deployment approach, integration capabilities, management complexity, scalability options, cost structure, and support offerings.

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Advice on AWS OpsWorks, Puppet Labs

Rogério

Software Developer

Aug 10, 2021

Needs adviceon

Docker

Git

Linux

Personal Dotfiles management

Given that they are all “configuration management” tools - meaning they are designed to deploy, configure and manage servers - what would be the simplest - and yet robust - solution to manage personal dotfiles - for n00bs.

Ideally, I reckon, it should:

be containerized (@{Docker}|tool:586|?)
be versionable (@{Git}|tool:1046|)
ensure idempotency
allow full automation (tests, CI/CD, etc.)
be fully recoverable (@{Linux}|tool:10483|/ @{macOS}|tool:5560|)
be easier to setup/manage (as much as possible)

Does it make sense?

282k views282k

Comments

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

AWS OpsWorks	Puppet Labs
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	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.
AWS OpsWorks lets you model the different components of your application as layers in a stack, and maps your logical architecture to a physical architecture. You can see all resources associated with your application, and their status, in one place.;AWS OpsWorks provides an event-driven configuration system with rich deployment tools that allow you to efficiently manage your applications over their lifetime, including support for customizable deployments, rollback, partial deployments, patch management, automatic instance scaling, and auto healing.;AWS OpsWorks lets you define template configurations for your entire environment in a format that you can maintain and version just like your application source code.;AWS OpsWorks supports any software that has a scripted installation. Because OpsWorks uses the Chef framework, you can bring your own recipes or leverage hundreds of community-built configurations.	Insight- Puppet Enterprise's event inspector gives immediate and actionable insight into your environment, showing you what changed, where and how by classes, nodes and resources.;Discovery- Puppet Enterprise delivers a dynamic and fully-pluggable discovery service that allows you to take advantage of any data source or real-time query results to quickly locate, identify and group cloud nodes.;Provisioning- Automatically provision and configure bare metal, virtual, and private or public cloud capacity, all from a single pane. Save time getting your cloud projects off the ground by reusing the same configuration modules you set up for your physical deployments.;Configuration Management- Puppet Enterprise's declarative, model-based approach automates repetitive tasks and eliminates configuration drift. You define the desired state of your infrastructure, and Puppet Enterprise enforces this state, freeing you to work on tougher projects.;Orchestration- Quickly deploy critical updates, like security patches, across hundreds of servers in seconds, or proactively initiate Puppet runs to update configurations and report changes. Puppet Enterprise allows you to orchestrate controlled, multi-step operations to targeted collections of nodes, giving you complete control over infrastructure changes.;Reporting- Get visibility into your infrastructure, browse resources, and view reports that help you manage your configuration. Puppet Enterprise provides node hardware and software inventory, Puppet run change reports, and node configuration graphs via the product's console or 3rd party APIs.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 7.7K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 2.2K
Stacks 196	Stacks 1.3K
Followers 222	Followers 793
Votes 51	Votes 227
Pros & Cons
Pros 32 Devops 19 Cloud management	Pros 52 Devops 44 Automate it 26 Reusable components 21 Dynamic and idempotent server configuration 18 Great community Cons 3 Steep learning curve 1 Customs types idempotence

What are some alternatives to AWS OpsWorks, Puppet Labs?

Ansible

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.

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.

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.

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

Webmin

It is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. It removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files.

Mina

Mina works really fast because it's a deploy Bash script generator. It generates an entire procedure as a Bash script and runs it remotely in the server. Compare this to the likes of Vlad or Capistrano, where each command is run separately on their own SSH sessions. Mina only creates one SSH session per deploy, minimizing the SSH connection overhead.

Puppet Bolt

It is an open source orchestration tool that automates the manual work it takes to maintain your infrastructure. Use it to automate tasks that you perform on an as-needed basis or as part of a greater orchestration workflow.