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Chef vs Puppeteer: What are the differences?
- Programming Language: One key difference between Chef and Puppeteer is the programming language they use. Chef is primarily based on Ruby, whereas Puppeteer is based on JavaScript.
- Configuration Management Approach: Chef follows an imperative approach where you specify the desired state of the system, while Puppeteer follows a declarative approach where you define the desired end state.
- Tool Focus: Chef is focused more on infrastructure automation, configuration management, and continuous deployment, whereas Puppeteer is mainly used for browser automation, testing, and scraping.
- Master-Agent Architecture: In Chef, there is a master-server architecture where the server communicates with agents on each node, while Puppeteer operates with a master-agent architecture where the master pushes configurations to agents.
- Ecosystem and Community: Chef has a larger ecosystem and community support compared to Puppeteer, which provides more resources, plugins, and community-driven modules for users.
- Learning Curve: Chef is known to have a steeper learning curve due to its complexity and flexibility, requiring deeper understanding of Ruby and infrastructure concepts, while Puppeteer is considered more user-friendly and easier to grasp, especially for JavaScript developers.
In Summary, Chef and Puppeteer differ in their programming language, approach to configuration management, focus, architecture, ecosystem, and learning curve.
I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?
You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.
I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.
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 Chef
- Dynamic and idempotent server configuration110
- Reusable components76
- Integration testing with Vagrant47
- Repeatable43
- Mock testing with Chefspec30
- Ruby14
- Can package cookbooks to guarantee repeatability8
- Works with AWS7
- Has marketplace where you get readymade cookbooks3
- Matured product with good community support3
- Less declarative more procedural2
- Open source configuration mgmt made easy(ish)2
Pros of Puppeteer
- Very well documented10
- Scriptable web browser10
- Promise based6
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Cons of Chef
Cons of Puppeteer
- Chrome only10