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

CFEngine

8
28
+ 1
0
Salt

420
449
+ 1
164
Add tool

CFEngine vs Salt: What are the differences?

  1. Architecture: CFEngine follows a client-server architecture where the policy server provides configurations to the clients, whereas Salt operates on a master-minion architecture where the master controls the minions by sending commands and configurations.
  2. Language: CFEngine uses its custom language called CFEngine Policy Language (CFL), which is specific to CFEngine, while Salt uses YAML for configuration management, making it easier for users familiar with YAML syntax.
  3. Scalability: CFEngine is designed to handle a large number of nodes efficiently, making it more suitable for larger environments, whereas Salt is known for its scalability in managing thousands of nodes with ease.
  4. Community Support: Salt has a larger and active community compared to CFEngine, leading to a wider range of resources, modules, and support available for Salt users.
  5. Flexibility: CFEngine is more rigid in its approach to configuration management, emphasizing predictability and stability, while Salt offers more flexibility in terms of rapid deployment, automation, and orchestration capabilities.
  6. Ease of Use: Salt is often considered more user-friendly and easier to learn for beginners due to its straightforward syntax and extensive documentation, making it more accessible for users looking to get started quickly.

In Summary, CFEngine and Salt differ in architecture, language, scalability, community support, flexibility, and ease of use.

Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of CFEngine
Pros of Salt
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 46
      Flexible
    • 30
      Easy
    • 27
      Remote execution
    • 24
      Enormously flexible
    • 12
      Great plugin API
    • 10
      Python
    • 5
      Extensible
    • 3
      Scalable
    • 2
      nginx
    • 1
      Vagrant provisioner
    • 1
      HipChat
    • 1
      Best IaaC
    • 1
      Automatisation
    • 1
      Parallel Execution

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    Cons of CFEngine
    Cons of Salt
      Be the first to leave a con
      • 1
        Bloated
      • 1
        Dangerous
      • 1
        No immutable infrastructure

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

      - No public GitHub repository available -

      What is CFEngine?

      It is an IT infrastructure automation and Continuous Operations framework that helps engineers, system administrators and other stakeholders in an IT organization manage IT infrastructure while ensuring service levels and compliance

      What is 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.

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

      What companies use CFEngine?
      What companies use Salt?
      See which teams inside your own company are using CFEngine or Salt.
      Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

      Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

      What tools integrate with CFEngine?
      What tools integrate with Salt?

      Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

      Blog Posts

      What are some alternatives to CFEngine and Salt?
      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.
      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.
      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.
      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.
      See all alternatives