Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack
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@DustinB3403 said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@Obsolesce said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@DustinB3403 said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@David_CSG said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
My need is for one mgmt tool that is: Viable for Windows and Mac OS endpoint management, and for simple basic (check for and) application of system updates, both fit the bill.
This is exactly why I am heavily testing out Ansible with @stacksofplates and @IRJ slapping me in the back of my head continuously.
If it's mostly Windows, I find SaltStack much easier to use with Windows. Lots more functionality, at least the last time I was deep into it. If it was mac/Linux clients only, then I'd choose Ansible likely, of course depending on things.
We're mostly mac.
Sorry to hear that.
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@Obsolesce said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@DustinB3403 said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@Obsolesce said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@DustinB3403 said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@David_CSG said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
My need is for one mgmt tool that is: Viable for Windows and Mac OS endpoint management, and for simple basic (check for and) application of system updates, both fit the bill.
This is exactly why I am heavily testing out Ansible with @stacksofplates and @IRJ slapping me in the back of my head continuously.
If it's mostly Windows, I find SaltStack much easier to use with Windows. Lots more functionality, at least the last time I was deep into it. If it was mac/Linux clients only, then I'd choose Ansible likely, of course depending on things.
We're mostly mac.
Sorry to hear that.
This^^^
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@Obsolesce said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@DustinB3403 said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@Obsolesce said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@DustinB3403 said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@David_CSG said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
My need is for one mgmt tool that is: Viable for Windows and Mac OS endpoint management, and for simple basic (check for and) application of system updates, both fit the bill.
This is exactly why I am heavily testing out Ansible with @stacksofplates and @IRJ slapping me in the back of my head continuously.
If it's mostly Windows, I find SaltStack much easier to use with Windows. Lots more functionality, at least the last time I was deep into it. If it was mac/Linux clients only, then I'd choose Ansible likely, of course depending on things.
We're mostly mac.
Sorry to hear that.
It's not so bad when you start forcing them to do what you want with the cli.
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It still a Unix-esk OS, so things I can do with Fedora I can more or less force to be done in OSX.
Just takes some finagling.
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Most client laptops are reliably in-house on set days.
For real road-warriors, I’ll leverage our RMM (Solarwinds), which is ok (I have to overcome shortcomings for the Mac with custom shell scripts, and shortcomings for Windows with custom powershell).But I’d much rather leverage Ansible where possible.
Other tools are DEP & MDM (Mosyle.com for macOS & does iOS), and Munki.
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@flaxking said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@David_CSG so what's your plan for ssh into laptops that are out and about?
It's pretty easily done with an SD-WAN.
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@DustinB3403 said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
It still a Unix-esk OS, so things I can do with Fedora I can more or less force to be done in OSX.
Just takes some finagling.
Not just UNIX-esk, fully UNIX certified. One of the last, and by far the most mainstream certified UNIX of the last decade.
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@David_CSG said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
For real road-warriors, I’ll leverage our RMM (Solarwinds), which is ok (I have to overcome shortcomings for the Mac with custom shell scripts, and shortcomings for Windows with custom powershell).
But I’d much rather leverage Ansible where possible.
Or you could use Salt to manage your in house and your road-warriors.
Though learning Ansible is probably a better career move (searching saltstack on stackoverflow jobs returns 7 results, ansible 106)However, I believe that salt generally makes more sense for user computers than ansible
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@David_CSG Do you work in the education sector?
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So this is now a super old post, but still relevant. I have been using Saltstack to manage my servers. I don't have any downsides to this so far, but I like to re-evaluate every so often. I see that Ansible open sourced (a couple years ago) their Tower GUI (AWX) That's attractive to me.
What are the current opinions on server management in regards to Ansible vs Saltstack.
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@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
So this is now a super old post, but still relevant. I have been using Saltstack to manage my servers. I don't have any downsides to this so far, but I like to re-evaluate every so often. I see that Ansible open sourced (a couple years ago) their Tower GUI (AWX) That's attractive to me.
What are the current opinions on server management in regards to Ansible vs Saltstack.
I looked at the open source AWX about a year ago. It's terrible. They treat it like it is alpha state software and you have to compile it yourself. So it rarely works. I even did a write up here on how to do it the 2nd time it actually worked (it broke the next day, so don't expect this to work still.) https://mangolassi.it/topic/19300/install-awx-on-centos-7-with-docker/25
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@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
So this is now a super old post, but still relevant. I have been using Saltstack to manage my servers. I don't have any downsides to this so far, but I like to re-evaluate every so often. I see that Ansible open sourced (a couple years ago) their Tower GUI (AWX) That's attractive to me.
What are the current opinions on server management in regards to Ansible vs Saltstack.
SaltStack has a new GUI now, too. It's very limited, but looks really promising.
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@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
So this is now a super old post, but still relevant. I have been using Saltstack to manage my servers. I don't have any downsides to this so far, but I like to re-evaluate every so often. I see that Ansible open sourced (a couple years ago) their Tower GUI (AWX) That's attractive to me.
What are the current opinions on server management in regards to Ansible vs Saltstack.
SaltStack has a new GUI now, too. It's very limited, but looks really promising.
OpenSource?
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What's the current opinion on agent vs agentless?
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@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
What's the current opinion on agent vs agentless?
6 of 1, half dozen of another. If an agent is required, just build it into your base image or installation script.
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@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
What's the current opinion on agent vs agentless?
Depends. Are you LAN-based, then agentless is nice. Pretty much anything else, agents are essentially the only option.
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@travisdh1 said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
What's the current opinion on agent vs agentless?
6 of 1, half dozen of another. If an agent is required, just build it into your base image or installation script.
Not quite. It's still "more work to deploy" for one, and "more secure" for the other.
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@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
What's the current opinion on agent vs agentless?
Depends. Are you LAN-based, then agentless is nice. Pretty much anything else, agents are essentially the only option.
Can you further clarify this statement? Why are agents the only option in a lanless (distributed) environment?
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@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@scottalanmiller said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
@AdamF said in Opinions: Ansible vs. SaltStack:
What's the current opinion on agent vs agentless?
Depends. Are you LAN-based, then agentless is nice. Pretty much anything else, agents are essentially the only option.
Can you further clarify this statement? Why are agents the only option in a lanless (distributed) environment?
Agentless is push model. How do you plan on pushing desired state to clients that have unpredictable connections? Agents can pull, regardless of where the endpoints are.
