Ansible vs Salt: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Ansible and Salt are both popular configuration management tools used in IT infrastructure automation. While they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between Ansible and Salt that set them apart. In this article, we will explore these differences and highlight their distinct features.

1. Architecture: Ansible follows a centralized architecture, where a master node controls and manages the entire infrastructure. On the other hand, Salt uses a master-minion architecture, where a master node communicates and controls multiple minion nodes. This allows for more efficient distribution of work and faster execution of tasks.

2. Language: Ansible uses a declarative language called YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) for defining tasks and configurations. It focuses on simplicity and readability, making it easy for users to understand and use. In contrast, Salt uses a more flexible and powerful scripting language called Jinja and utilizes Python for complex tasks, granting users greater control and customization options.

3. Scalability: When it comes to scalability, Salt has an edge over Ansible. Salt's master-minion architecture allows for easy scaling by adding more minion nodes, which can handle an extensive number of parallel tasks. In Ansible, the centralized architecture might face challenges when dealing with a large number of hosts, as it relies on SSH connections and can be slower in execution.

4. Remote Execution: One notable difference between Ansible and Salt is their remote execution mechanism. Ansible establishes SSH connections to the remote hosts and performs tasks over SSH, making it more suitable for environments with strict security policies. In contrast, Salt uses its own communication protocol called ZeroMQ, enabling faster and more efficient remote execution with minimal network overhead.

5. Extensibility: While both Ansible and Salt provide a rich set of predefined modules and states, Salt offers greater extensibility through its custom execution modules and state modules. This allows users to easily create their own modules or leverage existing Python code for complex configurations, providing more flexibility and customization options compared to Ansible.

6. Community and Ecosystem: Ansible boasts a larger and more established community, which contributes to its extensive collection of community-developed roles and playbooks readily available for use. Salt, although rapidly growing, has a smaller community but offers a flexible event-driven framework and provides more advanced features like event-driven orchestration and remote execution.

In summary, Ansible and Salt, while sharing similar goals, differ in architecture, language, scalability, remote execution mechanism, extensibility, and community support. These differences allow users to choose the tool that best suits their specific requirements and preferences.