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Cfengine VS mgmt

Compare Cfengine VS mgmt and see what are their differences

Cfengine logo Cfengine

CFEngine is a configuration management and automation framework that lets you securely manage your...

mgmt logo mgmt

Event-driven, parallel config management.
  • Cfengine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-12
  • mgmt Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-17

Cfengine features and specs

  • Scalability
    Cfengine is designed to handle large-scale environments efficiently, making it suitable for managing a vast number of systems.
  • Lightweight Agent
    It employs a lightweight agent that consumes minimal system resources, reducing the overhead on managed systems.
  • Security
    Cfengine has a strong focus on security, using encrypted communication between the nodes and server, ensuring integrity and confidentiality.
  • Model-based Configuration
    The tool uses a model-based approach for configuration management, which makes it easy to understand and predict the outcomes of applied policies.
  • Mature and Stable
    With a long history dating back to the 1990s, Cfengine is mature and known for its stability and reliability in production environments.

Possible disadvantages of Cfengine

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    The learning curve can be relatively steep for new users due to its unique policy language and declarative syntax.
  • Complex Debugging
    Debugging configurations might be complex due to intricate policies and a lack of straightforward error messages.
  • Limited Community Support
    Compared to other configuration management tools, Cfengine has a smaller community, which can limit access to third-party modules and assistance.
  • Less Extensible
    While powerful, Cfengine may not offer as much extensibility as some competitors, potentially limiting custom integrations.
  • UI and Usability
    The user interface and overall usability could be less intuitive compared to other modern configuration management tools.

mgmt features and specs

  • Declarative Configuration
    Mgmt allows users to define their configurations in a declarative manner, making it easier to manage infrastructure as code. This can help reduce errors and increase reproducibility.
  • Real-Time Automation
    Mgmt is designed for real-time automation, meaning it continuously monitors and updates resources as needed. This helps ensure that the system state is always as expected and can quickly respond to changes.
  • Event-Driven
    The engine is event-driven, allowing it to react to changes in the environment immediately. This can lead to more efficient operations compared to periodic polling models used by some other tools.
  • Parallel Execution
    Mgmt can execute configuration changes in parallel, which can significantly reduce the time required for large-scale deployments and updates.
  • Resource Modeling
    The tool offers a rich resource modeling capability, allowing for complex dependencies and interactions to be easily managed.

Possible disadvantages of mgmt

  • Mature Alternatives
    Tools like Ansible, Puppet, and Chef have been around longer and have larger communities and more mature ecosystems, which can be beneficial for complex or enterprise-grade deployments.
  • Limited Documentation
    Compared to more established tools, mgmt may have less extensive documentation and community resources, potentially leading to a steeper learning curve for new users.
  • Smaller Community
    The community around mgmt is smaller, which can mean less support, fewer third-party modules, and less community-driven content compared to its competitors.
  • Complex Use Cases
    For extremely complex or large-scale environments, mgmt might not yet offer all the features and integrations required without extensive custom development.
  • Changing State
    The continuous monitoring and updating approach might not suit all environments, particularly those where stability over longer periods without changes is desired.

Analysis of Cfengine

Overall verdict

  • Cfengine is a good choice for organizations that require a stable, scalable, and efficient configuration management solution. Its long history and proven track record make it a reliable tool for managing diverse and complex IT environments. However, its learning curve can be steep, and it might not have as active a community or as many user-friendly features compared to some of its newer counterparts like Puppet or Ansible.

Why this product is good

  • Cfengine is a powerful configuration management tool that's been around for a long time, providing stability and maturity to its users. It excels in automating infrastructure management and is known for its scalability, efficiency, and security features. Its lightweight agent and fast execution make it suitable for managing a large number of nodes without a significant performance impact. Additionally, Cfengine has a policy-based approach which ensures that system configurations are enforced consistently, and its declarative language makes it easier to define desired system states.

Recommended for

  • Large enterprises managing thousands of servers
  • Organizations needing a lightweight and fast performance solution
  • IT teams with a focus on security and consistent policy enforcement
  • Users comfortable with a steeper learning curve in exchange for stability and scalability benefits

Cfengine videos

Webinar: Presenting the new CFEngine Community 3.4.0

More videos:

  • Review - WEBINAR - Infrastructure Automation with CFEngine at LinkedIn
  • Review - Webinar - Unveiling CFEngine Enterprise 3.0

mgmt videos

MGMT - 11โ€‹โ€ขโ€‹11โ€‹โ€ขโ€‹11 ALBUM REVIEW

More videos:

  • Review - MGMT - Little Dark Age ALBUM REVIEW
  • Review - MGMT- Congratulations Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Cfengine and mgmt)
DevOps Tools
63 63%
37% 37
Product Deployment
71 71%
29% 29
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
IT Automation
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Cfengine and mgmt

Cfengine Reviews

Best 8 Ansible Alternatives & equivalent in 2022
CFEngine is a DevOps tool for IT automation. It is an ideal tool for configuration management. It is one of the best Ansible competitors that helps teams to automate large-scale complex infrastructure.
Source: www.guru99.com
35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category
CFEngine is the most cut and dry configuration management software on this list. It was originally released in 1993 and has managed to keep up with software development trends. CFEngine features full CI/CD integration. You can automate infrastructure configurations and manage your patches. It also features compliance reporting and infrastructure hardening.

mgmt Reviews

We have no reviews of mgmt yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, mgmt should be more popular than Cfengine. It has been mentiond 40 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.

Cfengine mentions (5)

  • German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice
    Your admin uses cfengine for example https://cfengine.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Replacement for Chef?
    Another oldie but goodie is cfengine: https://cfengine.com/. Source: over 3 years ago
  • What does everyone use for automating setting up a new VPS?
    I'm using rudder (https://www.rudder.io/), it's based on cfengine (https://cfengine.com/). But this is more enterprise ready, you'll be fine with lightweight ansible. Nice thing is, that rudder ensures compliance by periodically executing all defined rules on all endpoints. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Understanding Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in less than 10 minutes
    CFEngine Ansible Chef Puppet Saltstack. - Source: dev.to / over 5 years ago
  • Immutability & loose coupling: a match made in heaven
    Automating mutable systems is often referred to as Configuration Management, and leverages tools such as Cfengine, Puppet, Chef, or Ansible. This tooling uses principles based on the concepts of target state, idempotence, and somewhat related to Mark Burgessโ€™ Promise Theory. Configuration Management aims to make the system convergent, by running a tool on a regular basis, in order to resynchronize the system with... - Source: dev.to / over 5 years ago

mgmt mentions (40)

  • DAG Workflow Engine
    Here's a different kind of workflow engine with a proper DSL. It turns out config management is the same problem as workflow engines, if you use my modern definition of config management. https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Terraform CDK has been phased out
    Have a look at https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/ and tell me what you think. We don't have enough docs though. Tough being an open source thing that you want to keep open. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • D2: Diagram Scripting Language
    I'm the main author of https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/ and we use a lot of graphs. (Mostly DAG's actually.) In particular we'll have a DAG and then add nodes and edges to it, and then remove some and so on... It would be nice to visualize these changes. We currently use graphviz, but it's not "stable" so a diagram jumps around a lot when we look at snapshot to snapshot... If (1) we could guarantee some kind of... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • The Future Is Not Self-Hosted
    This article misses the point. The future will be self-hosted (or local community hosted) when automation technology actually matures and shows some real innovations. That's one reason we're building https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Systems Correctness Practices at Amazon Web Services
    It's very interesting (I applaud this) that one of the main goals seems to be to make it more approachable as compared to TLA+, but then they go in write it in C# which I consider to be an incredibly unapproachable community and language. I'm not trying to draw the ire of the Microsoft fan boys, and there are certainly smart people working on that, but it's just not going to happen for most people. Had this been... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Cfengine and mgmt, you can also consider the following products

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

YouTube - Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.

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

Mastodon - Mastodon is a decentralized, open source social network. This is just one part of the network, run by the main developers of the project It is not focused on any particular niche interest - everyone is welcome!

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

Rudder - Rudder is an easy to use, web-driven, role-based solution for Continuous Automation and Compliance.