ansible/docs/comparisons.md

Comparisons

Confused about how Ansible fits in? Here's a comparison with some common tools. Accuracy is important, so corrections are VERY welcome if we've got something wrong. For space reasons, we can't list everybody's favorite management tool.

	Ansible	Puppet	Chef	Func	Capistrano
Purpose	Config, Deployment, Ad-Hoc	Config, Deployment	Config, Deployment	Ad-Hoc	Deployment
Config Language	Simple YAML format	Custom DSL	Ruby code	None	None
Config Language Style	Very simple, not expressive	Very rich & expressive	Very rich & expressive	None	None
Config Ordering	Simply ordered, with notifiers	Strict dependency DAG	Simply ordered	None	Simply ordered
Communication	SSH push	SSL pull or push trigger	SSL pull or push trigger(?)	SSL push	SSH
Daemons Required?	no	yes	yes	yes	no
Database Required	no	yes	yes	no	no
Inventory Features	planned	yes	yes?	some	no
Message Bus Required	no	yes	yes	no	no
Implemented In	Python	Ruby	Ruby, Erlang	Python	Ruby
Extensible In	Anything	Ruby	Ruby	Python	Ruby
Codebase Size	Small	Large	Large	Medium	Medium
Module Support	Emerging	Wide/Established	Wide/Established	Medium/Established	Poor
Users Targeted	Sysadmins, developers, QA, web admins	Sysadmins	Sysadmins, web admins	Sysadmins, developers	Web admins
Can Easily Build Applications On It	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Parallelism & Scaling Tech	Fork/Merge	Add Servers / Staged Commands / No Server	Adding More Erlang	Fork/Merge	No
Delegated Hierachies	No	No	No	Yes	No