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Puppet Bolt vs Puppet Labs: What are the differences?

Introduction

Puppet Bolt and Puppet Labs are both tools used for configuration management and orchestration. However, there are key differences between the two that set them apart in terms of use cases and functionalities.

  1. Deployment Flexibility: Puppet Bolt is designed for ad-hoc tasks and can be used for executing commands and scripts remotely across a variety of systems, including agents and agentless nodes. In contrast, Puppet Labs provides a more comprehensive solution for enterprise-level configuration management, enabling administrators to define desired system states and apply changes across a fleet of managed nodes.

  2. Ease of Use: Puppet Bolt focuses on simplicity and ease of use for quick automation tasks. It is a lightweight tool that does not require a Puppet server for configuration management. On the other hand, Puppet Labs offers a more robust and feature-rich platform with a steeper learning curve, as it involves the setup and maintenance of a Puppet server infrastructure.

  3. Resource Abstraction: Puppet Bolt primarily leverages existing operating system resources and tools, making it easier to interact with systems without having to define custom resources. Puppet Labs, on the other hand, allows the creation of custom resources using Puppet's Domain Specific Language (DSL), providing greater flexibility and control over system configurations.

  4. Scalability: Puppet Bolt is designed for smaller-scale tasks and is generally suited for managing a few dozen to a few hundred nodes. It utilizes a task-based approach rather than maintaining a persistent connection to the managed nodes. In comparison, Puppet Labs is built for large-scale deployments and can scale to manage thousands of nodes efficiently with its client-server architecture.

  5. Backup and Storage: Puppet Bolt does not provide any built-in backup or storage functionality. It focuses on executing tasks and scripts across systems rather than managing state or data persistence. In contrast, Puppet Labs includes built-in data storage capabilities, allowing for the tracking and retrieval of past configurations and system states.

  6. Third-Party Integrations: Puppet Bolt has limited support for integrations with external tools and services. While it can be used in conjunction with other DevOps tools, its primary focus is on task automation. Puppet Labs, on the other hand, offers a wide range of plugins and integrations for seamless collaboration with popular third-party tools, enabling more comprehensive and streamlined configuration management workflows.

In summary, Puppet Bolt is a lightweight, flexible tool for ad-hoc automation tasks, while Puppet Labs provides a more comprehensive and scalable solution for enterprise-level configuration management with advanced features and integrations.

Advice on Puppet Labs and Puppet Bolt
Needs advice
on
AnsibleAnsibleChefChef
and
Puppet LabsPuppet Labs

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.

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Replies (2)
Recommends
on
AnsibleAnsible

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.

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Gabriel Pa
Recommends
on
KubernetesKubernetes
at

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

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Pros of Puppet Labs
Pros of Puppet Bolt
  • 52
    Devops
  • 44
    Automate it
  • 26
    Reusable components
  • 21
    Dynamic and idempotent server configuration
  • 18
    Great community
  • 12
    Very scalable
  • 12
    Cloud management
  • 10
    Easy to maintain
  • 9
    Free tier
  • 6
    Works with Amazon EC2
  • 4
    Declarative
  • 4
    Ruby
  • 3
    Works with Azure
  • 3
    Works with OpenStack
  • 2
    Nginx
  • 1
    Ease of use
  • 3
    Simple
  • 2
    Easy to Install
  • 2
    Powerful
  • 2
    Agentless

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Cons of Puppet Labs
Cons of Puppet Bolt
  • 3
    Steep learning curve
  • 1
    Customs types idempotence
    Be the first to leave a con

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    What is 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.

    What is 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.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

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      What are some alternatives to Puppet Labs and Puppet Bolt?
      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
      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.
      Dotenv
      It is a zero-dependency module that loads environment variables from a .env file into process.env. Storing configuration in the environment separate from code is based on The Twelve-Factor App methodology.
      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.
      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.
      See all alternatives