Ansible vs. Puppet: How Does Each Stack Up?

Looking to understand the difference between Ansible vs. Puppet? In a DevOps landscape crowded with different tools that can handle configuration management, complex tasks, and compliance requirements, you’ll want to make sure you are equipped with the right tool for your organization's needs. 

What is the Difference Between Ansible vs. Puppet?

Both Ansible and Puppet can help manage infrastructure as code (IaC) and deploy configuration management across an entire organization. However, Puppet’s scalability and use in complex, long-term deployments make it a preferred platform for larger organizations, while Ansible’s ability to easily reprovision made it ideal for smaller teams who need flexibility with deployment. 

Both Ansible and Puppet start with strong open-source software that share a singular goal: to make IT operations run more efficiently by automating routine tasks such as patches, updates, and software deployment. Both also provide configuration management and compliance capabilities to keep organizations compliant to regulations in their industry. 

Both platforms offer free open source and paid commercial options. Puppet's commercial option is Puppet Enterprise. For Ansible, this option is Ansible Automation Platform. 

To assess which platform is the right fit, you’ll want to ask yourself questions about what you need from an infrastructure automation platform:

• Are you looking to push out commands through a built-for-purpose communications channel, or manage complex user accounts? 
• How much flexibility do you need to make changes in your environment? 
• Are the tasks within your environment complex, or are you managing a smaller set of requirements? 
• How much support are you looking for over the lifecycle of the platform?
• Is your organization growing and does it need additional scalability? 
• What is your desired state — do you need continuous compliance and drift remediation, or simply to manage unbounded change? 

Don't just read about the Puppet difference — see for yourself with a free trial. 

By better understanding the end state — exactly what you’d like to accomplish with infrastructure automation — you can sort through key differences between Ansible vs. Puppet to make the right decision for your needs. It’s also not uncommon for infrastructure to be built using different sets of tools like Ansible and Puppet. Some organizations build their infrastructure using one platform and then switch to another as their needs change.

Puppet vs. Ansible FAQ

Are Puppet and Ansible the Same?

• No. Puppet and Ansible are two configuration management tools with different coding languages, features, and capabilities.

How is Puppet Different from Ansible?

• Among other differences (see below), Puppet uses declarative automation. That means you tell Puppet your desired configurations and Puppet will figure out how to get there. Ansible uses imperative automation, which means you lay out the steps required to get to that desired state instead of the tool figuring it out.

Is Puppet Faster than Ansible?

• It depends. Ansible Playbooks are written in YAML and Puppet modules are written in PuppetDSL (a Ruby-based language). This means Puppet can handle more complex infrastructure, while Ansible is often used for smaller deployments. Ultimately, how quickly you can start using Puppet or Ansible will depend on your familiarity with their different languages.

Can You Use Puppet with Ansible?

• Yes. It's possible to use more than one configuration management tool at a time. It's not easy and it requires more experience, but it is possible. Sometimes, infrastructure is built with one tool before it's replaced with another. It's common for teams to build with a simpler tool like Ansible before adding or replacing Ansible with Puppet so they can scale up.

Which is Better: Puppet or Ansible?

• It depends on what you need. Ansible is often used for small or temporary deployments. Puppet is built to support bigger deployments as your needs grow, which is why lots of organizations choose Puppet for infrastructure automation and configuration management.

Ansible vs. Puppet: Key Features to Note 

Let’s dive into the specific line-items you’ll want to consider between Ansible vs. Puppet. 

Desired State Enforcement

One of the primary ways Puppet and Ansible differ is in their ability to keep infrastructure in a desired state.

• Ansible uses an agentless approach, which relies on communication methods like SSH or WinRM to push updates from the Ansible primary server to the servers under management.
• Puppet uses agent-based automation, which installs Puppet agents on managed servers that communicate directly with the Puppet primary server.

Puppet's approach makes it possible to continuously enforce desired state across an entire fleet of servers. The Puppet agents check in with the primary server every 30 minutes by default, and if something's not configured correctly, the primary server pushes code to bring the drifted server back to the desired configuration. And because Puppet doesn't have to use SSH or WinRM, it can manage that desired state across Linux and Windows environments, even when the network is spotty or down.

Ansible's agentless approach (which doesn't natively work on Windows), on the other hand, can't continuously enforce a desired state because the agentless connection is less reliable. If a network outage or overload interrupts the connection between the primary Ansible server and its managed nodes, Ansible can't push updates or check in with managed nodes, leaving it unable to correct drift that might happen.

Implementation

Ansible is known for its quick setup and ease of use, as well as it’s user-friendly language, YAML. This language is procedural and task based. For anything that is more complex and requires conditional logic, users will need to implement the Jinja2 language. 

Puppet’s Domain Specific Language is declarative, and was designed to be more like Ruby, and it requires set up on both the server and client as it’s installed. The additional set up required for Puppet provides greater visibility across devices as we will see, as well as greater flexibility and control when changes are required. The orchestrator can use tasks which can also be written in any language the managed nodes understand, such as BASH, Python, Ruby, Go, or PowerShell (for Windows).

Flexibility 

Ansible’s automation sequences are made up of a list of commands that must be run in a certain order to work. The Puppet server compiles code into a deterministic set of controls that are automatically performed in the appropriate order, which adds to their flexibility and customization.

For tasks such as continuous compliance and drift remediation for example, Puppet server compiles code into a deterministic set of controls that are automatically performed in the appropriate order. 

Visibility 

Ansible Controller (formerly Ansible Tower) offers a visual user interface to schedule and run tasks. However, both reporting and historical auditing capabilities are not included, which makes it difficult to preview the impact of new code. 

Puppet’s interface was built with viewing, managing, and monitoring in mind. Puppet Impact Analysis, a premium feature for Puppet Enterprise, lets you see how changes to your existing infrastructure code could affect other parts of your system.

Scalability 

Puppet’s reusable blocks of IaC can apply policies at scale across complex IT environments. Because of this, Puppet is a fantastic platform for scaling automation to support business growth. 

Enterprise Support 

What happens when something goes wrong, or you need additional support? Both Puppet and Ansible have backups in the event of a failure, which means there are no interruptions within either platforms. 

Because the Puppet agent runs on the managed node, even the loss of a primary server means only that no new code is delivered to the managed node. The existing catalog will still be applied, keeping the system in compliance and remediating any drift. If the Ansible controller is lost, playbooks cannot be executed, potentially leaving managed nodes to drift and increase risk in the environment. 

🤔 Check out another comparison with our "Terraform vs. Puppet" blog.

Since Ansible works primarily by pushing playbooks from a centralized control plane (potentially through “execution engines”) to the managed nodes, scalability is limited to the number of outgoing network connections each “execution engine” can establish at one time. It is also common to add execution engines for every 500-1000 nodes under Ansible control. 

On the other hand, since Puppet primarily works on a pull model where clients check in on a more random scale, each “compiler” can generally handle 3-5x more nodes for the same hardware capability. In some cases, the push model that Ansible uses (and that Tasks/Plans leverage), changes may propagate through an environment in a shorter time period. 

Community 

Both Puppet and Ansible have strong user communities that can provide support for both open source and commercial needs. The Puppet Community connects through an active Slack channel and contributes modules and tutorials to the always-growing Puppet Forge. 

Differences at a Glance: 

Other Ansible vs. Puppet Considerations 

In the case of Ansible vs. Puppet, scale is at the heart of the comparison. Some organizations are small and lean — they might work in regulated industries where compliance and visibility are key. Those teams might look for something more “off the shelf” for automation needs when customization is not critical. For this purpose, Ansible is always ready to deploy and relatively easy to get running. 

Puppet was built to handle complexity and scale, and it’s a more robust tool for organizations that need to implement a long list of tasks, are handling compliance concerns, and are continuing to grow. When reporting and consistency is a concern, Puppet is a fantastic option. 

The best way to see if Puppet is a good solution for your organization is to try it — we offer a free trial of Puppet Enterprise where you can run up to 10 nodes for free with no time limit.

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