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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Infrastructure Build Tools
  5. Packer vs Scalr

Packer vs Scalr

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Scalr
Scalr
Stacks51
Followers34
Votes26
Packer
Packer
Stacks573
Followers566
Votes41

Packer vs Scalr: What are the differences?

Packer: Create identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image. It embraces modern configuration management by encouraging you to use automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images; Scalr: Scalr is cloud management software for public & private infrastructure. Scalr is not an infrastructure provider or reseller. The infrastructure you deploy on is yours: you give us the keys to your infrastructure cloud so we can make the API calls to the provider on your behalf and so we can also rev up or power down servers for you. When traffic piles up, Scalr detects the increased load, commissions new servers for you from the cloud, and then spreads the load. When using Scalr ConfigTemplates, you can easily make configuration changes for services such as MySQL and Apache. Scalr does the heavy work, pushing those changes out to your servers.

Packer can be classified as a tool in the "Infrastructure Build Tools" category, while Scalr is grouped under "Cloud Management".

Some of the features offered by Packer are:

  • Super fast infrastructure deployment. Packer images allow you to launch completely provisioned and configured machines in seconds, rather than several minutes or hours.
  • Multi-provider portability. Because Packer creates identical images for multiple platforms, you can run production in AWS, staging/QA in a private cloud like OpenStack, and development in desktop virtualization solutions such as VMware or VirtualBox.
  • Improved stability. Packer installs and configures all the software for a machine at the time the image is built. If there are bugs in these scripts, they'll be caught early, rather than several minutes after a machine is launched.

On the other hand, Scalr provides the following key features:

  • MySQL replication
  • Scalable app servers
  • Scalable database

Packer is an open source tool with 9.1K GitHub stars and 2.47K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Packer's open source repository on GitHub.

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Detailed Comparison

Scalr
Scalr
Packer
Packer

Scalr is a remote state & operations backend for Terraform with access controls, policy as code, and many quality of life features.

Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image. It embraces modern configuration management by encouraging you to use automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images.

Shared State File Storage & Locking; Run Triggers; Terraform CLI Integration;Version Control Integration;Identity And Access Management;Policy As Code With Open Policy Agent;Modules;Template Registry;Webhooks;Cost Estimation
Super fast infrastructure deployment. Packer images allow you to launch completely provisioned and configured machines in seconds, rather than several minutes or hours.;Multi-provider portability. Because Packer creates identical images for multiple platforms, you can run production in AWS, staging/QA in a private cloud like OpenStack, and development in desktop virtualization solutions such as VMware or VirtualBox.;Improved stability. Packer installs and configures all the software for a machine at the time the image is built. If there are bugs in these scripts, they'll be caught early, rather than several minutes after a machine is launched.;Greater testability. After a machine image is built, that machine image can be quickly launched and smoke tested to verify that things appear to be working. If they are, you can be confident that any other machines launched from that image will function properly.
Statistics
Stacks
51
Stacks
573
Followers
34
Followers
566
Votes
26
Votes
41
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 5
    Image Builder
  • 3
    Auto Scaling
  • 3
    Open Source
  • 2
    Multi-Cloud Support
  • 2
    User Friendly
Pros
  • 27
    Cross platform builds
  • 8
    Vm creation automation
  • 4
    Bake in security
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Good documentation
Integrations
Azure DevOps
Azure DevOps
Terraform
Terraform
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
GitHub
GitHub
GitLab
GitLab
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean
Docker
Docker
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
OpenStack
OpenStack
VirtualBox
VirtualBox

What are some alternatives to Scalr, Packer?

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation

You can use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create your own templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run your application. You don’t need to figure out the order in which AWS services need to be provisioned or the subtleties of how to make those dependencies work.

Pulumi

Pulumi

Pulumi is a cloud development platform that makes creating cloud programs easy and productive. Skip the YAML and just write code. Pulumi is multi-language, multi-cloud and fully extensible in both its engine and ecosystem of packages.

Morpheus

Morpheus

Morpheus is a cloud application management and orchestration platform that works on any cloud or infrastructure, from AWS to bare metal. Enjoy complete cloud freedom with Morpheus.

Azure Resource Manager

Azure Resource Manager

It is the deployment and management service for Azure. It provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure subscription. You use management features, like access control, locks, and tags, to secure and organize your resources after deployment.

Habitat

Habitat

Habitat is a new approach to automation that focuses on the application instead of the infrastructure it runs on. With Habitat, the apps you build, deploy, and manage behave consistently in any runtime — metal, VMs, containers, and PaaS. You'll spend less time on the environment and more time building features.

Google Cloud Deployment Manager

Google Cloud Deployment Manager

Google Cloud Deployment Manager allows you to specify all the resources needed for your application in a declarative format using yaml.

CopperEgg

CopperEgg

Continuous visibility and cloud monitoring for all your servers – hosted or private, Linux or Windows. Works great with Amazon EC2, Rackspace, or any public or private cloud.

Mist.io

Mist.io

Create, reboot or destroy virtual machines. View their metadata, tag and search them. Assign keys and send SSH commands through the web. Enable monitoring, alerting & automation. You'll know right away if anything goes wrong. You'll be able to address issues from anywhere, using your phone or tablet.

AWS Cloud Development Kit

AWS Cloud Development Kit

It is an open source software development framework to model and provision your cloud application resources using familiar programming languages. It uses the familiarity and expressive power of programming languages for modeling your applications. It provides you with high-level components that preconfigure cloud resources with proven defaults, so you can build cloud applications without needing to be an expert.

Yocto

Yocto

It is an open source collaboration project that helps developers create custom Linux-based systems regardless of the hardware architecture. It provides a flexible set of tools and a space where embedded developers worldwide can share technologies, software stacks, configurations, and best practices that can be used to create tailored Linux images for embedded and IOT devices, or anywhere a customized Linux OS is needed.

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