What is the best alternative to Puppet?

Question

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score 24 · Answer 1

RUDDER

Top Pro

Continuous configuration - dedicated to production

Rudder checks every rule that has been set up to keep it compliant over time. It is a tool made to be used in production. It's not a dev tool where there is no continuity constraint. See More

Top Con

Community growing but not very big at this day

There is more and more people getting involved in the Rudder community, but it's nothing compared to Puppet community so far. See More

Top Pro

Web UI + CLI + API

There is 3 ways to use Rudder. The biggest surprise is that everything that can be done with code is also possible with the web interface, without knowing anything about development or automation, generally speaking. See More

Top Con

Not a one-shot deployment tool

Rudder is overkill if the goal is only to push one-time actions. Thankully, a plugin is available to connect Rudder with Ansible and enhance its capability. See More

Top Pro

Light agent developed in C - up to 10 000 nodes

The agent has nearly no impact concerning resources and that is the reason why Rudder is able to manage thousands of servers without any performance issues. See More

Top Pro

Codeless user interface with built-in template library and editor

Non-expert users can define parameters in a central interface, and Rudder will automatically make sure that IT services are installed, configured, running and in good health. All actions (checks, warnings, fixed errors…) are reported upon immediately in the user interface, keeping drift from nominal behaviour low. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Apart the agent on proprietary OS (AIX, Windows, ...) , Rudder is an open source and free software. This means that the code source is available on Github for every part of Rudder (Rudder webapp, and every other Normation repository). This also means that packages for a wide range of distributions are released and available to download freely. See More

Top Pro

Running on Linux, Windows, AIX, Solaris, Android...

Rudder can manage quite everything. So far only HP-UX and iOS don't have their own agent version, but everything else is available already. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, AIX, Raspbian

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24 0

score 15 · Answer 2

SaltStack

Top Pro

Friendly and open community

Salt has an impressive welcoming and active community of users. There are user groups all over the world (Stockhom, Silicon Valley, Paris, and lots more), and an active live chat. See More

Top Pro

Easy to read output

Salt's configuration files and setups are organized into YAML files. This makes them very easy to read and understand since YAML is considered very readable. See More

Top Pro

Agentless via SSH is an option

Salt can run agentless just like ansible, allowing it to manage devices that you can't run an agent on (routers/switches, etc). See More

Top Pro

Communicates through SSH or agents

Salt can communicate with clients through agents called minions, or through SSH. See More

Top Pro

Scalable

With Salt you can have multiple layers of masters which result in an arrangement which distributes load and increases redundancy. Upstream masters can then control downstream masters and their minions. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Salt has support for Windows, Linux and Unix. Though it's fair to say that it's easier to use and it's more useful in Unix and Linux systems. See More

Top Pro

Fast execution of commands

Salt works around a Salt master which has multiple agents (Salt minions) that have a persistent connection to the master. Because of this persistent connection, commands to the master are fast to reach the minions. Furthermore, the minions also save various data to the cache in order to make execution faster. When compared against other tools to run the same actions, Salt almost always completes the actions in significantly less time. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

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15 0

score 37 · Answer 3

Ansible

Top Pro

Agentless

Ansible does not use agents. Instead, all master-agent communications are handled via SSH commands or through the Paramiko module which provides a Python interface to SSH. See More

Top Con

Slow

Compared to other tools, Ansible requires more time to complete the same actions. See More

Top Pro

Gentle learning curve

Ansible is agentless, making it quick and painless to setup. Ansible has clear and detailed documentation and provides plenty of built-in modules. Its DSL is obtained using YAML and a familiar template system. See More

Top Con

Somewhat weak documentation

Ansible is still relatively new, as far as server automation tools go. This is the reason that many users have found it's documentation lacking in some parts. Although this is mitigated by the fact that it's very easy to learn to use. See More

Top Pro

Simple tasks can be run from the command line

Some simple tasks such as triggering updates or reboots, or even checking if the service is running can be done without configuration files. These commands can be run from the command line instead. See More

Top Con

Too easy to move the port in the crappy scripts you've been using for years

If you have an extensive codebase of scripts, your users might find it too easy to just port in the same unsupportable crappy scripts they've been using for years. See More

Top Pro

Support for major cloud providers

Ansible supports managing major cloud devices (AWS, RackSpace, Digital Ocean, OpenStack) through a collection of modules which are available. See More

Top Con

Doesn't have its own inventory system

Ansible really depends on you to provide it a list of nodes to run on and doesn't actively maintain a central inventory See More

Top Pro

Extensible in any language / runtime

Although you may need to preinstall favorite programming environment, Ansible modules are accessed via shell calls and therefore any executable on the remote system built for use with Ansible may be used as an Ansible module. See More

Top Con

No Python API available, despite the fact that Ansible is written in Python

Despite being written and taking good advantage of the python environment, Ansible offers no python api for programming, and does not make it possible to follow best practices for writing custom Ansible modules. See More

Top Pro

Web UI

Ansible has a Web UI in the form of AnsibleWorks AWX which unfortunately does not tie directly into the CLI. So configuration elements present in the CLI can not appear in the UI unless a sync pass is run. Although the Web UI is helpful and functional, it's still not as complete feature-wise as the CLI. See More

Top Pro

Easy to customize

Ansible is very easy to customize. It doesn't force you to use a language with which you are unfamiliar. Instead, all commands are packaged into YAML modules which are called playbooks. So as long as you use a programming language that can output JSON, you are able to customize it. See More

Top Pro

Rich diff

Modules that support rich diffs can expose nearly every detail of what will change. However not all core modules support diffs, so there may still be some opaque chances made. See More

Top Pro

Creating reusable components is simple

Making roles modular and reusable is a fast process with Ansible. See More

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37 11

score 8 · Answer 4

Chef

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Chef is cross-platform. Offering support for the biggest platforms out there: Linux, Windows and *nix. See More

Top Con

Ties you to Ruby

Chef is written in Ruby and its CLI uses a Ruby-based DSL. In order to fully use and customize it you need to use Ruby as Chef does not give users any other choice when it comes to languages to use to configure it. See More

Top Pro

Popular choice among large companies

Chef has an impressive list of companies using it's automation service. Among them is Facebook, Etsy, Ancestry.com, PharmMD and Yahoo. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Chef has a steeper learning curve than many of its competitors, making it a more difficult tool for the non-devs of a team (such as sysadmins) to work with. For some teams, the added cost of teaching Chef to the team may outweigh the benefits. See More

Top Pro

Large community

Chef has a relatively large community. One of the reasons for it is the fact that it's a pretty old and mature tool. Chef, originally released in 2009, is a more mature product. Being popular and with a large and dedicated community means that Chef has lots and lots of resources and guides from third party sources out there for beginners to pick up. Not only that, there are also many plugins and configuration recipes made by the community. See More

Top Pro

Strong version control capabilities

Chef is centered around Git for it's configuration and deployments. Because of this, Chef also has great version control capabilities through Git. See More

Top Pro

Mature

Chef was released in 2009, which is relatively a long time ago for software. Since then it has been through several versions and many bug fixes and tests. All of this can make Chef more appealing to teams who are looking for stability and maturity, which are things that Chef brings on the table. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD

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8 8

score 10 · Answer 5

CFEngine

Top Pro

Fast

The cfengine agent is written in C and has some of the fastest execution times around. See More

Top Con

Lacking ready to use modules like puppet

Because there is no ECOsystem like the puppetforge to share code you have to figure things out for yourself, which is good if you want to learn things but bad when you need to get things done. See More

Top Pro

Scaleable

The decentralized architecture and innate speed allow cfengine to easily scale to thousands of nodes. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

It takes time and lots of practice to learn. Documentation is a bit lacking and if there are no examples to look to, it's that much more difficult to work with. See More

Top Pro

Secure

Very good security track record See More

Top Pro

Helpful community

Although the community is not as big as puppets its very friendly and helpful to get thing's fixed or to point you in the right direction. See More

Top Pro

Works great on low power devices and appliances

Because CFEngine is written in C it's not only ver fast and scaleable but it only uses a few MB of memory and it's easy on the CPU See More

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10 2

score 1 · Answer 6

Cake

Top Pro

Tools support

Standard support for MSBuild, MSTest, xUnit, NUnit, NuGet, ILMerge, WiX and SignTool. See More

Top Con

No GUI

Everything is script based, there is no graphical front end. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Windows, Linux and macOS versions available. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

1 0

score 461 · Answer 7

GitLab

Top Pro

Free and open source

GitLab is a free and open source project licensed under MIT. Source code for Enterprise Edition can be found here and Community Edition here. See More

Top Con

Not all features are free

GitLab's Service Desk features and some more are only available in GitLab EE. See More

Top Pro

At feature parity with GitHub

Gitlab is very close to Github in use and feel, written in Ruby on Rails, open source and hosted on Github as well as on GitLab.com See More

Top Con

Not lightweight

GitLab is demanding, Gitea is a much more lightweight solution which uses less CPU and memory. See More

Top Pro

Good web UI

GitLab's UI is clean and intuitive. Each view is designed to not fill the screen with useless information. It displays the activity in a feed-type way in the most prominent part of the view. On top of that, there's a toolbar with buttons which can filter this feed by pushes, merge events or comments. On the left, there's a menu that displays all the links that take you to the different views. For example, a file directory which displays all the files in that repo, a commit view which displays all the commits in cronological order, a network and a graph view that display important information graphically etc... All these details make GitLab's UI extremely intuitive and easy to use, no view is overflown with information and every view displays only the most useful and crucial information needed at that time. See More

Top Con

Kind of slow

Top Pro

Regular updates

GitLab is being constantly worked on and has a new release every month on the 22nd. Updating is also very easy through a single apt-get command. See More

Top Con

Bad code review possibilities

No precommit reviews. See More

Top Pro

Has wikis and pages

Wiki and pages support out of the box. See More

Top Con

Requires at least 1GB of RAM

The default installation is meant for already many users and recommends 2GB of RAM. 1GB is possible but results in some HTTP 500 errors. On a Raspberry Pi 2 it runs fine most of the time, though it eats 75% of the RAM. Another option is to reduce unicorn['worker_processes'] in gitlab.rb. See More

Top Pro

Supports pull requests

Has pull request (AKA, merge request) support. See More

Top Con

The upgrade process fails more often than not

Even for minor versions such as 9.2.0 to 9.3.0. Sometimes the upgrade failure is silent and only seen when logging in first time after update and an http 502 error is given. See More

Top Pro

Easy to install with the packages

With the packages available here, GitLab can be installed in two minutes. See More

Top Con

No Windows support

There is no support for Windows. The use of a virtual machine will be required. See More

Top Pro

Support for protected branches

A protected master branch means that no code can be merged to master without passing a code review by an authorised developer. With GitLab this comes out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Permissions and roles are supported

It has private/public repositories, roles for users (master, developer, reporter, guest). All of these can be set from the user interface. Same permissions set for the UI work for the SSH as well. See More

Top Pro

Issue tracking support

Has issue tracking out of the box. Creating tickets, commenting on issues, closing issues etc... It's all there out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Integrates fully with LDAP

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. GitLab EE adds additional functionality over CE such as support for multiple LDAP servers and group sync. See More

Top Pro

Comes with integrated CI/CD solution

GitLab CI makes it easy to set up CI and deployment for projects in GitLab. It supports parallel testing, multiple platforms, Docker containers and streaming build logs. See More

Top Pro

Supports Approvers/Reviewers of Pull/Merge requests

Since 7.12 you can define a minimum number of approvers for merge requests. See More

Top Pro

"Snippets" support

Snippets are similar to (well-known) GitHub "gists". They are a way to share code or have conversations about anything without needing a full git repo. The implementation here reminds more of a sort of pastebin. See More

Top Pro

Scalable

A single instance can handle up to 40,000 users (requires a server with 64 core CPU and 64 GB of RAM) and it can run on multiple application servers to grow beyond that. See More

Top Pro

Manages large files and binaries with integrated Git Annex

Git Annex enables Git to manage large files (esp binaries) without checking them into Git. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with other systems by webhooks

Integrates out of the box with services like Bugzilla, Pushbullet, Microsoft Team Notification and many more - one can also add own webhooks to integrate with own services. See More

Top Pro

Most GitLab EE features become part of GitLab CE after time

EE is the commercial Enterprise Edition, CE is the free and OpenScource Community Edition. Features such as Cycle Analytics were first a part of the EE and are now also available in CE. See More

Top Pro

Can provide a Docker registry

The default docker.io registry is the docker hub but you can also login to other docker registries. And GitLab provides one for all Repos that make use of this feature. See More

Top Pro

Integration with third party applications

GitLab integrates with multiple third-party services to allow external issue trackers and external authentication. GitLab can integrate with many third-party apps to allow external issue tracking and authentication. It can also be integrated with several services, such as: Slack Campfire Flowdock Hipchat Gemnasium Pivotal Tracker See More

Top Pro

Very feature rich RESTful-API

GitLab exposes a REST API that allows automation possible, like PR bots. See More

Top Pro

Allows Timetracking with Cycle-Analytics

Very useful project management feature that allows you to know how long it takes to go from the idea to production. See More

Specs

461 104