Ansible vs. Chef vs. Puppet vs. Salt

There are currently various tools to maintain automatically an infrastructure. The four listed below seem to be the main ones.

·         Ansible http://docs.ansible.com/intro_installation.html#getting-ansible

Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates.

http://docs.ansible.com/intro_installation.html#getting-ansible

·         Chef https://www.chef.io/

“Chef turns infrastructure into code. With Chef, you can automate how you build, deploy, and manage your infrastructure. Your infrastructure becomes as versionable, testable, and repeatable as application code."

·         Puppet https://puppetlabs.com

“Puppet is a configuration management solution that allows you to define the state of your IT infrastructure, and then automatically enforces the desired state. Puppet automates every step of the software delivery process, from provisioning of physical and virtual machines to orchestration and reporting; from early-stage code development through testing, production release and updates.”

·         Salt : http://saltstack.com

“SaltStack takes a new approach to infrastructure management by developing software that is easy enough to get running in seconds, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to control and communicate with them in milliseconds. SaltStack delivers a dynamic infrastructure communication bus used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more. The Salt project was launched in 2011 and today is the fastest-growing, most-active infrastructure orchestration and configuration management open source project in the world. The SaltStack community is committed to keeping the Salt project focused, friendly, healthy and open.”

http://salt.readthedocs.org/en/latest/contents.html

And some comparisions : 

• [infoworld] Puppet vs. Chef :  http://www.infoworld.com/article/2614204/data-center/puppet-or-chef--the-configuration-management-dilemma.html
• [infoworld] Review : Puppet vs. Chef vs. Ansible vs. Salt : http://www.infoworld.com/article/2609482/data-center/data-center-review-puppet-vs-chef-vs-ansible-vs-salt.html 
• [infoworld] Review: Ansible orchestration is a veteran Unix admin's dream : http://www.infoworld.com/article/2612397/data-center/review--ansible-orchestration-is-a-veteran-unix-admin-s-dream.html 
• [infoworld] Review: Salt keeps server automation simple : http://www.infoworld.com/article/2612536/data-center/review--salt-keeps-server-automation-simple.html
• Review: Puppet 3.0 pulls more strings http://www.infoworld.com/article/2611099/data-center/review--puppet-3-0-pulls-more-strings.html