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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Deployment
  4. Server Configuration And Automation
  5. Chef vs Docker

Chef vs Docker

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Chef
Chef
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.1K
Votes345
Docker
Docker
Stacks194.2K
Followers143.8K
Votes3.9K

Chef vs Docker: What are the differences?

# Introduction
Here are some key differences between Chef and Docker. 

1. **Deployment Environment**: Chef is used for configuration management and automating infrastructure tasks, while Docker is a containerization platform that enables you to package and run applications in lightweight containers.
2. **Packaging**: In Chef, the code and recipes are used to deploy and configure software on servers, while Docker uses images to package applications and their dependencies into deployable containers.
3. **Isolation**: Chef operates at the infrastructure level, managing configurations and ensuring consistency across servers, while Docker provides application-level isolation with containers, allowing for a more lightweight and efficient approach to running applications.
4. **Scalability**: Chef is well-suited for managing large-scale infrastructures and complex configurations, ensuring consistency across a wide range of servers, whereas Docker is designed for scalable deployment of applications, enabling you to quickly spin up and scale containers as needed.
5. **Dependency Management**: Chef enables you to manage dependencies and configurations across servers, ensuring that each server is configured correctly, while Docker simplifies dependency management by encapsulating applications and their dependencies within containers, reducing conflicts and compatibility issues.
6. **Workflow Integration**: Chef integrates with various workflow automation tools and can be part of a larger DevOps toolchain, while Docker is often used in combination with orchestration tools like Kubernetes for managing clusters of containers in a distributed environment.

In Summary, Chef focuses on infrastructure configuration management, while Docker specializes in containerization for application deployment.

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Advice on Chef, Docker

Florian
Florian

IT DevOp at Agitos GmbH

Oct 22, 2019

Decided

lxd/lxc and Docker aren't congruent so this comparison needs a more detailed look; but in short I can say: the lxd-integrated administration of storage including zfs with its snapshot capabilities as well as the system container (multi-process) approach of lxc vs. the limited single-process container approach of Docker is the main reason I chose lxd over Docker.

482k views482k
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

Chef
Chef
Docker
Docker

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.

The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere

Access to 800+ Reusable Cookbooks;Integration with Leading Cloud Providers;Enterprise Platform Support including Windows and Solaris;Create, Bootstrap and Manage OpenStack Clouds;Easy Installation with 'one-click' Omnibus Installer;Automatic System Discovery with Ohai;Text-Based Search Capabilities;Multiple Environment Support;"Knife" Command Line Interface;"Dry Run" Mode for Testing Potential Changes;Manage 10,000+ Nodes on a Single Chef Server;Available as a Hosted Service;Centralized Activity and Resource Reporting;"Push" Command and Control Client Runs;Multi-Tenancy;Role-Based Access Control [RBAC];High Availability Installation Support and Verification;Centralized Authentication Using LDAP or Active Directory
Integrated developer tools; open, portable images; shareable, reusable apps; framework-aware builds; standardized templates; multi-environment support; remote registry management; simple setup for Docker and Kubernetes; certified Kubernetes; application templates; enterprise controls; secure software supply chain; industry-leading container runtime; image scanning; access controls; image signing; caching and mirroring; image lifecycle; policy-based image promotion
Statistics
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
194.2K
Followers
1.1K
Followers
143.8K
Votes
345
Votes
3.9K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 110
    Dynamic and idempotent server configuration
  • 76
    Reusable components
  • 47
    Integration testing with Vagrant
  • 43
    Repeatable
  • 30
    Mock testing with Chefspec
Pros
  • 823
    Rapid integration and build up
  • 692
    Isolation
  • 521
    Open source
  • 505
    Testa­bil­i­ty and re­pro­ducibil­i­ty
  • 460
    Lightweight
Cons
  • 8
    New versions == broken features
  • 6
    Documentation not always in sync
  • 6
    Unreliable networking
  • 4
    Moves quickly
  • 3
    Not Secure
Integrations
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure
HP Cloud Compute
HP Cloud Compute
Joyent Cloud
Joyent Cloud
Java
Java
Docker Compose
Docker Compose
VirtualBox
VirtualBox
Linux
Linux
Amazon EC2 Container Service
Amazon EC2 Container Service
Docker Swarm
Docker Swarm
boot2docker
boot2docker
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Docker Machine
Docker Machine
Vagrant
Vagrant

What are some alternatives to Chef, Docker?

Ansible

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.

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.

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.

Fabric

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.

LXD

LXD

LXD isn't a rewrite of LXC, in fact it's building on top of LXC to provide a new, better user experience. Under the hood, LXD uses LXC through liblxc and its Go binding to create and manage the containers. It's basically an alternative to LXC's tools and distribution template system with the added features that come from being controllable over the network.

AWS OpsWorks

AWS OpsWorks

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

LXC

LXC

LXC is a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. Through a powerful API and simple tools, it lets Linux users easily create and manage system or application containers.

cPanel

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

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