Ansible vs. Chef - which is better?

Comments

• aglodek Member

  January 2015

  @drserver said: for example, our new management portal will use chef to clear firewall rules, change root pw, install custom software from playbook and so on...

  Nice Exactly my idea for a couple of SAAS projects I'm working on

  Thanked by 1drserver
• bookstack Member

  January 2015

  rawrwriter said: This can be done if I'm reading you right.

  ansible --ask-pass blah.yml --extra-vars "blah=blah" --extra-vars "{'list_of_blah': [1,2,3]}"

  as an example.

  No, I am not talking about passing the global parameters in the runtime. And I am against this practice, all information should be checked in somewhere including the secrets.

  I am talking about the task to instantiate a file from the template, like setting up the nginx:

  - name: "set up /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/{{ app_role }}.conf"
    sudo: true
    action: template src=nginx.jinja2 dest=/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/{{ app_role }}.conf
    notify: restart nginx
    tags:
      - nginx
  

  The app_role and all the variables in nginx.jinja2 must be setup before ahead, you can not pass arbitrary key/value pairs to run this command. It is very awkward.

  Also the developer of ansible might be rude.
• sman Member

  January 2015 edited January 2015

  aglodek said: preferable

  @outime said:

  In version 0.17.0 of Salt a new transport system was introduced, the ability to use SSH for Salt communication. This addition allows for Salt routines to be executed on remote systems entirely through ssh, bypassing the need for a Salt Minion to be running on the remote systems and the need for a Salt Master.

  That doesn't look the same to me. There are a bunch of however's, what have you's, exceptions, cannot yet do's, special configurations etc. Looks like something they bolted on to try compete with Ansible but it's not fully baked yet.

  Ansible just uses the operating system SSH keys so if you do that now you have zero additional config required and zero limitations.

  Thanked by 1aglodek
• aglodek Member

  February 2015

  Follow up question: what are the minimum system requirements to run:

  • Ansible
  • SaltStack
  • Chef
  • ASYD

  To be clear, I'm not looking to break any records here, but rather for recommended stable, production system minimum. Will a 128MB KVM cut it?