In the world of DevOps, various companies are building and implementing processes using IAC (Infrastructure as Code). Puppet, Terraform, and Ansible enables businesses to scale and develop repeatable configurations that enforce procedures to ensure correct outcomes constantly. All of these platforms are highly advanced for deploying replicable and repetitive applications that have complicated requirements.
Over the course of this blog, we will thoroughly analyze the differences among the 3 in order to help you choose the right platform for your organization.
Configuration Management Vs. Orchestration
Terraform and Ansible have some vital differences; however, the two possess some similarities as well. They mainly differ when we look at the two central DevOps concepts: orchestration and configuration management.
While Ansible is mainly a CM (Configuration Management) tool, Terraform is widely used as an orchestration tool. However, the two perform differently, they tend to overlap since the functions are not mutually exclusive.
Orchestration tools only have one central aim: to make sure an environment stays in its ‘desired state.’ Terraform is specifically designed for this as it stores the state of the environment, and when something does not function properly, it automatically computes and restores the system.
It is ideal for all those environments that require an invariable and constant state. Terraform possesses the ability to resolve all anomalies efficiently, whereas CM tools are different; they don’t reset a system. Rather, they locally troubleshoot the problem.
Puppet, on the other hand, is designed to manage and install software on servers. Similar to Puppet, Ansible also possesses the ability to configure every action and instrument and ensure it functions flawlessly without any damage or error.
A Configuration Management tool works diligently to troubleshoot a problem rather than replacing the system entirely. In a scenario like this, Ansible comes out as a winner since it can do both, replace infrastructure and perform orchestration.
However, Terraform is more commonly used. It is preferred all over the world because of its advanced state management capabilities.
One important thing to keep in mind is that there is a major overlap of features here. The majority of the configuration management tools possess the ability to do provisioning to some level, and just like that, a lot of provisioning tools can do a bit of configuration management too. What you eventually choose depends significantly on the requirements of your servers.
Declarative Vs. Procedural
DevOps tools come in 2 major categories: ‘Procedural’ and ‘Declarative.’ Procedural refers to the tool that requires precise procedure and direction to be laid out in code. Whereas, Declarative refers to the tool that declares exactly what’s needed.
Since there’s a defined environment in Terraform, it is completely declarative. In case there’s an alteration that’s required in the environment, it’s rectified on the next ‘Terraform Apply.’
Puppet is somewhat similar to Terraform in this case since it also aims to be declarative.
Ansible, surprisingly, is somewhat of a hybrid in this case. It has the capability of doing a little bit of both. It performs ad-hoc commands which implement procedural-style configurations and utilizes most of the modules that perform in a declarative-style.
In case you opt for Ansible, thoroughly read the documentation so that you understand its role and know what to expect. It is extremely important to see if you need to subtract or add resources to acquire the ideal outcome.
Comparing Provisioning
Automating the provisioning of any infrastructure is the basic step in the automation of an entire operational lifecycle of an application and its deployment. The software runs from a VM, Docker container, or a bare metal server in the cloud.
Either of the two: Ansible or Terraform, is an amazing choice for provisioning such systems. Since Puppet is a relatively older tool, it’s not usually preferred under these circumstances.
Let’s have a look at how Ansible and Terraform approach the process of provisioning:
Provisioning with Terraform:
There are numerous behaviors not included in the existing declarative model of Terraform. This setup adds a substantial amount of complexity and uncertainty when using Terraform in the following ways:
The Terraform model doesn’t possess the capability to model provisioners’ actions when it’s part of the plan. It needs to coordinate more details than usual to use provisioners successfully.
It further requires additional measures such as granting direct network access to the user’s servers, installing essential external software, and issuing Terraform credentials for logging in.
Provisioning with Ansible:
On the other hand, Ansible is quite adept in this matter and can provision the latest cloud platforms, network devices, bare metal servers, virtualized hosts, and hypervisors with ease.
After the successful completion of bootstrapping, Ansible allows separate teams to connect nodes to the storage. It could easily add them to a load balancer or other operational tasks. This setup makes Ansible the perfect connecting tool for any pipeline process.
It helps in automatically taking the fundamental infrastructure right to daily management.
Provisioning via Ansible allows users to use a human-readable, universal automation language flawlessly across configuration management, orchestration, and application deployment.
Differences between Ansible and Terraform for AWS
AWS stands for Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon, which offers individuals, companies, and business entities on cloud computing platforms. Both Terraform and Ansible have their own advantages when used with AWS; let’s have a look at some of them.
Terraform with AWS:
There are several advantages when using Terraform with AWS.
- Terraform is open-source, along with an increasing and eager community of users behind it.
- In case of a failure, they isolate dependent resources. Non-dependent resources, on the other hand, continue to be created, updated, and destroyed.
- Terraform provides users with the ability to preview changes prior to getting applied.
- Terraform comes with a user-friendly custom syntax and JSON support.
- It has an in-built understanding of resource relationships.
Ansible with AWS:
Here are some of the advantages when using Ansible with AWS.
- With Ansible Tower’s cloud inventory synchronization, you will be able to find precisely which AWS instances register, no matter how they’re launched.
- You can easily manage inventory by keeping an eye on the deployed infrastructure accurately through their lifecycles. So, you can rest assured that your systems are appropriately managed and security policies are executed with perfection as well.
- Safety in automation with its set of role-based access controls making sure users will only have access to the AWS resources they require to fulfill their job.