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Ansible VS Cisco Packet Tracer

Compare Ansible VS Cisco Packet Tracer and see what are their differences

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Ansible logo Ansible

Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine

Cisco Packet Tracer logo Cisco Packet Tracer

Download Cisco Packet Tracer, an innovative network simulation and visualization tool used by Cisco Networking Academy students and instructors.
  • Ansible Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-05
  • Cisco Packet Tracer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-04

Ansible features and specs

  • Agentless
    Ansible is agentless, meaning it doesn't require any software to be installed on the remote nodes. This simplifies management and reduces overhead.
  • Ease of Use
    Ansible uses a simple, easy-to-read YAML syntax for its playbooks, reducing the learning curve and making it accessible to those without extensive programming experience.
  • Scalability
    Ansible is designed to handle large-scale deployments, making it suitable for managing numerous machines or services efficiently.
  • Extensive Modules
    Ansible has a rich library of modules that support a wide variety of system tasks, cloud providers, and application deployments, offering great versatility.
  • Strong Community
    There is a large and active Ansible community that contributes to its development and provides support, which can be valuable for troubleshooting and learning best practices.
  • Idempotency
    Tasks in Ansible are idempotent, meaning they can be run multiple times without changing the system beyond the intended final state, ensuring reliable deployments.

Possible disadvantages of Ansible

  • Performance Overhead
    Being agentless, Ansible relies on SSH for communication with nodes, which can add performance overhead, especially when managing a large number of hosts.
  • Limited Windows Support
    Ansible's core is primarily designed for Unix-like systems, and while there is support for Windows, it's not as robust or as seamless as it is for Unix/Linux systems.
  • Lack of Built-in Error Handling
    Ansible's error handling is somewhat rudimentary out-of-the-box. Complex error handling scenarios often require custom solutions, which can complicate playbooks.
  • Learning Curve for Complex Scenarios
    While simple tasks are easy to set up, more complex configurations can become challenging quickly and may require a deep understanding of Ansible's modules and templating.
  • Reliance on YAML
    The use of YAML, while human-readable, can be prone to syntax errors such as incorrect indentation, which can potentially lead to hard-to-track-down bugs.
  • Dependency on Python
    Ansible requires Python to be installed on managed nodes. This could be an issue in environments where it's not feasible or desired to have Python installed.

Cisco Packet Tracer features and specs

  • Free for Students
    Cisco Packet Tracer is accessible for free to students enrolled in Cisco Networking Academy courses, making it an economical option for educational purposes.
  • Comprehensive Simulation
    The tool provides a detailed and accurate simulation of network operations, allowing users to create complex network topologies and understand real-world networking scenarios.
  • Educational Tool
    Designed as a learning tool, Packet Tracer includes various tutorials, labs, and assessments that help students understand networking concepts more thoroughly.
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Cisco Packet Tracer is available for multiple operating systems including Windows, macOS, and Linux, thus accommodating a wide range of users.
  • Collaborative Features
    The software supports multi-user collaboration, allowing teams to work together on network projects in real-time.

Possible disadvantages of Cisco Packet Tracer

  • Limited to Cisco Devices
    As a Cisco product, Packet Tracer primarily focuses on Cisco devices and protocols, which may not encompass all the needs for those interested in a multi-vendor environment.
  • Resource-Intensive
    Packet Tracer can be demanding on system resources, necessitating modern hardware to run complex simulations smoothly.
  • Learning Curve
    For beginners, the interface and abundance of features can be overwhelming, requiring a significant time investment to become proficient.
  • Limitations in Network Scope
    While Packet Tracer is robust for many educational scenarios, it has limitations in simulating larger, more complex networks compared to professional tools.
  • Lack of Real-World Interactivity
    Despite its detailed simulation capabilities, Packet Tracer cannot fully replicate the intricacies and variability of real-world network conditions.

Analysis of Ansible

Overall verdict

  • Ansible is a powerful and versatile tool for automation, suited to a variety of use cases, from configuration management to application deployment. Its simplicity, flexibility, and broad community support make it a popular choice among DevOps professionals.

Why this product is good

  • Ansible is considered good because it is an open-source automation tool that is simple to set up and use. It uses a straightforward language (YAML) for its playbooks, which makes it accessible to both developers and IT operations. Ansible is agentless, meaning it connects to nodes using SSH, which simplifies management and enhances security. It also has strong community support and thorough documentation.

Recommended for

  • System administrators seeking to automate configuration management
  • DevOps teams looking to streamline application deployment processes
  • Organizations aiming to implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
  • IT professionals who prefer an agentless approach to automation
  • Teams interested in a tool with strong community support and extensive integrations

Analysis of Cisco Packet Tracer

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Cisco Packet Tracer is considered a good tool for learning and practicing networking concepts. Its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features make it a valuable resource for both beginners and advanced users seeking to deepen their understanding of networking.

Why this product is good

  • Cisco Packet Tracer is a widely used network simulation tool that helps users understand networking concepts through interactive simulations. It is particularly beneficial for learning because it allows students to design, configure, and troubleshoot networks without the need for physical hardware. The platform supports a wide range of Cisco devices and offers a realistic environment to practice networking skills.

Recommended for

  • Networking students and educators
  • IT professionals looking to enhance their skills
  • Individuals preparing for Cisco certifications
  • Hobbyists interested in learning networking principles

Ansible videos

+ Add

What Is Ansible? | How Ansible Works? | Ansible Tutorial For Beginners | DevOps Tools | Simplilearn

More videos:

  • Review - Automation with Ansible Playbooks | Review on Ansible Architecture
  • Review - Book Review : Mastering Ansible (Jesse Keating) by Zareef Ahmed

Cisco Packet Tracer videos

+ Add

Review Cisco Packet Tracer

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ansible and Cisco Packet Tracer)

Ansible

Cisco Packet Tracer

DevOps Tools
100 100%
DevOps Tools
0% 0
Tool
0 0%
Tool
100% 100
Continuous Integration
100 100%
Continuous Integration
0% 0
Network & Admin
0 0%
Network & Admin
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Ansible and Cisco Packet Tracer

Ansible Reviews

What Are The Best Alternatives To Ansible? | Attune, Jenkins &, etc.
To put it simply, Ansible automates a wide range of IT aspects that includes configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, etc. Plus, while using Ansible, you can patch your application, automate deployments, and run compliances and governance on your application. You can easily manage it by using a web interface known as Ansible Tower. Furthermore,...
Source: www.apzomedia.com
Best 8 Ansible Alternatives & equivalent in 2022
Ansible is a simple IT automation tool that is easy to deploy. It connects to your nodes and pushes out small programs called “Ansible modules” to those nodes. Then it executes these models over SSH and removes them when finished. The library of modules will reside on any machine, therefore there is no requirement for any servers and databases.
Source: www.guru99.com
Top 5 Ansible Alternatives in 2022: Server Automation Solutions by Alexander Fashakin on the 19th Aug 2021 facebook Linked In Twitter
Your project connects to Ansible through nodes called Ansible Modules. You can use these modules to manage your project. As an agentless architecture, Ansible allows you to run modules on any system or server. It doesn’t require client/server software or an agent to be installed. With Ansible, you can use Python Paramiko modules or SSH protocols.
Source: www.servertribe.com
Ansible vs Chef: What’s the Difference?
For Ansible, Simplilearn presents the Ansible Foundation Training Course. Ansible 2.0, a simple, popular, agent-free tool in the automation domain, helps increase team productivity and improve business outcomes. Learn with
Source: www.simplilearn.com
Chef vs Puppet vs Ansible
Ansible supports considerable ease of learning for the management of configurations due to YAML as the foundation language. YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) is closely similar to English and is human-readable. The server can help in pushing configurations to all the nodes. The applications of Ansible are clearly suitable for real-time execution along with the facility of...
Source: www.whizlabs.com

Cisco Packet Tracer Reviews

We have no reviews of Cisco Packet Tracer yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ansible seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 9 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Ansible mentions (9)

  • Mentorship Group
    We are open to practice using any open-source project, however, we want to set a sharp focus on projects maintained by the Red Hat, and our own projects in the Caravana Cloud organization on github. If there is no reason to do differently, we'll build using technologies such as OpenShift, Quarkus, Ansible and related projects. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Observability Mythbusters: Yes, Observability-Landscape-as-Code is a Thing
    *Codifying the deployment of the OTel Collector *(to Nomad, Kubernetes, or a VM) using tools such as Terraform, Pulumi, or Ansible. The Collector funnels your OTel data to your Observability back-end. ✅. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Maintenance mode - vmware.vmware_rest Ansible collection
    Most of what I've learnt today was purley from this blog and only because it's from ansible.com - dated now I guess ... Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Proactive Kubernetes Monitoring with Alerting
    I installed the helm release using Ansible, but you can install with the following helm commands:. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Cannot run a playbook in crontab - Python error
    [root@ansible ~]# pip show ansible Name: ansible Version: 2.9.25 Summary: Radically simple IT automation Home-page: https://ansible.com/ Author: Ansible, Inc. Author-email: info@ansible.com License: GPLv3+ Location: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packagesRequires: jinja2, PyYAML, cryptography Required-by:. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

Cisco Packet Tracer mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Cisco Packet Tracer yet. Tracking of Cisco Packet Tracer recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ansible and Cisco Packet Tracer, you can also consider the following products

Chef - Automation for all of your technology. Overcome the complexity and rapidly ship your infrastructure and apps anywhere with automation.

GNS3 - GNS3 is a graphical network simulator that allows simulation of complex networks.

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

ns-3 - a discrete-event network simulator for internet systems

Puppet Enterprise - Get started with Puppet Enterprise, or upgrade or expand.

NetSim - NetSim software was created to simulate various Cisco systems. Cisco software is known around the world as being one of the best network, routing and switch systems for businesses and private use. Read more about NetSim.

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