Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Ansible vs Bitnami: 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 Bitnami? The App Store for Server Software. Our library provides trusted virtual machines for every major development stack and open source server application, ready to run in your infrastructure.
Ansible can be classified as a tool in the "Server Configuration and Automation" category, while Bitnami is grouped under "Server Software".
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, Bitnami provides the following key features:
- BitNami Cloud Hosting lets you instantly run every BitNami package you already know and love and have it automatically configured, backed up and monitored.
- Launch applications to the cloud with one click.
- Choose from 50 popular open source applications, including SugarCRM, Alfresco, Drupal, WordPress, Redmine, JasperServer, Joomla! and many more.
"Agentless" is the top reason why over 251 developers like Ansible, while over 2 developers mention "Cloud Management" as the leading cause for choosing Bitnami.
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 Bitnami is used by CameraLends, Mark & Phil, and Devotee. Ansible has a broader approval, being mentioned in 955 company stacks & 578 developers stacks; compared to Bitnami, which is listed in 9 company stacks and 13 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 Bitnami
- Cloud Management6
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Ansible
- Dangerous8
- Hard to install5
- Doesn't Run on Windows3
- Bloated3
- Backward compatibility3
- No immutable infrastructure2