This document compares Puppet and Ansible configuration management tools. It summarizes that Puppet requires installing an agent on clients, while Ansible uses SSH and does not require installing software. Puppet uses its own domain-specific language while Ansible uses YAML, which is considered more human-readable. Overall Puppet has a larger ecosystem and more experienced users while Ansible is newer and has opportunities to learn from other tools' mistakes.

1. Switching from Puppet
to Ansible
Dennis “the awesome” Rowe
WP Engine

2. Little about me
• Done some Chef
• Done some Puppet (last gig)
• Now doing some Ansible

3. Love one another
• Emacs vs. Vi
• Linux vs. Windows
• Puppet vs. Chef
• Not this talk

4. Puppet
• Founded in 2005 by Luke Kanies
• Client-server or standalone client
• Written in Ruby but has its own language (also
called puppet)

5. Ansible
• Founded in 2012 by Michael DeHaan
• Orchestration engine (manage nodes via SSH)
• Written in Python with configuration done using
yaml

6. Agentfull - Puppet
• Puppet requires software to be installed on the
client (Ruby, at that).
• Puppet can be a pain to install in mixed
environments. Think AIX, BSD, Solaris, and others.
• More packages to keep up to date. Now you have
to update an agent on 1000 servers, and what if it
doesn’t work?

7. Agentless - Ansible
• Less boot strapping required
• Most systems come with SSHD installed
• Ansible does not require software to be installed on
the client.
• If managing a standalone host, then benefits are
less. You have to install about the same number of
bits for Puppet standalone vs. ansible run locally.

8. Language - Puppet
• In puppet, order of statements on disk does not
specify order of execution. This can be difficult for
people to understand the first time around.
• Yet another domain specific language
• Extensible in Ruby
• A lot of promise that never materialized

9. Language - Ansible
• YAML
• YAML
• Human readable
• Machine readable
• Not what most people think of as a programming
language
• Easier to understand initially

10. Language - The Bad
• The underlying language implementation leaks via
the templating system.
• Both Python and Ruby suck at threading.
• Rant rant rant

11. Puppet
• Barrier to entry is higher
• Large ecosystem
• PuppetDB, MCollective, Hiera
• Larger pool of people with experience

12. Ansible
• Use a standards based configuration language
(feel a little dirty calling it a computer language)
• SSH (everybody uses it, known quantity)
• It is new. Ansible has a great opportunity to learn
from the past mistakes of other CMs.

13. General Thoughts
• Bad code can be written in any language
• Configuration management is more of an art