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Puppet VS Terraform

Compare Puppet VS Terraform and see what are their differences

Puppet logo Puppet

Easily create custom dashboards for your users

Terraform logo Terraform

Tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.
  • Puppet Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23
  • Terraform Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-24

Puppet

Website
puppet.com
$ Details
-
Release Date
2009 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
Oregon
City
Portland
Founder(s)
Andrew Shafer
Employees
250 - 499

Puppet features and specs

  • Scalability
    Puppet is designed to handle large-scale deployments efficiently, making it suitable for enterprises with thousands of nodes.
  • Declarative Language
    Puppet uses a high-level declarative language that simplifies the definition of system configurations, enabling easier maintenance and readability.
  • Extensive Ecosystem
    Puppet has a vast ecosystem of modules and plugins available through the Puppet Forge, allowing for quick implementation of common tasks and integrations.
  • Strong Community and Support
    Puppet has an active community, comprehensive documentation, and robust support offerings, including professional services, making it easier to get help and resolve issues.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Puppet supports a wide range of operating systems, including various Linux distributions, Windows, and Unix, providing flexibility in diverse environments.

Possible disadvantages of Puppet

  • Steep Learning Curve
    New users may find Puppet's DSL (Domain-Specific Language) challenging to learn, requiring significant time and effort to become proficient.
  • Resource Intensive
    Puppet server can be resource-intensive, especially in large environments, necessitating robust hardware to ensure optimal performance.
  • Lower Flexibility
    Puppet's declarative nature, while simplifying configurations, can limit the flexibility to implement custom complex logic compared to some other configuration management tools.
  • Cost
    Though Puppet offers an open-source version, the enterprise features and support are part of paid plans, which could be a consideration for budget-conscious organizations.
  • Initial Setup Complexity
    The initial setup and configuration of Puppet can be complex and time-consuming, particularly for organizations new to configuration management tools.

Terraform features and specs

  • Infrastructure as Code
    Terraform allows you to define your infrastructure in configuration files that can be versioned and stored in a version control system. This makes it easy to track changes, roll back if necessary, and collaborate with team members.
  • Multi-Cloud Support
    Terraform supports various cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and others. This allows you to manage your entire infrastructure using a single tool, regardless of the underlying provider.
  • Immutability
    Terraform promotes immutable infrastructure, meaning once a component is created, it is not modified in place but replaced if changes are needed. This leads to more predictable and stable deployments.
  • State Management
    Terraform maintains the state of your infrastructure, which helps in tracking resource changes over time and making incremental updates. This is crucial for applying changes in a controlled manner.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Terraform has a large and active community, along with a rich ecosystem of providers and modules. This makes it easier to find support, share solutions, and leverage pre-built components.

Possible disadvantages of Terraform

  • Complex State Management
    While state management is a significant feature, managing state files can become complex and risky. Issues like state file corruption or sharing between team members can lead to challenges.
  • Learning Curve
    Terraform has a steep learning curve for beginners, especially those who are not familiar with infrastructure as code concepts or the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).
  • Partial Updates
    Terraform's plan and apply operations are not atomic, meaning that partial updates can sometimes leave your infrastructure in an inconsistent state if an error occurs during execution.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies between resources can be challenging in Terraform. Misconfigured dependencies can lead to issues during resource creation, deletion, or updates.
  • Cost Management
    While Terraform is excellent for provisioning resources, it does not have built-in cost management or optimization features. Users need to rely on third-party tools to manage and optimize costs.

Puppet videos

Echelon Reflect Review

More videos:

  • Review - JBL REFLECT FLOW Truly Wireless Earphone - REVIEW
  • Review - Reflect (Pre-rolled pack) by Cove reviewed | OCS Review

Terraform videos

Wampler Terraform | Reverb Tone Report Demo

More videos:

  • Review - MOD PEDAL POWERHOUSE! Wampler TERRAFORM
  • Demo - IT'S FINALLY HERE! | Wampler Terraform Demo | It's as good as you hoped!!!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Puppet and Terraform)
DevOps Tools
20 20%
80% 80
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Product Deployment
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 Puppet and Terraform

Puppet Reviews

Best 8 Ansible Alternatives & equivalent in 2022
Puppet enterprise tool eliminates manual work for software delivery process. This Ansible equivalent software helps developer to deliver great software rapidly
Source: www.guru99.com
12 Open Source/Commercial Software for Data Center Infrastructure Management
Puppet Enterprise has a free and fully-functional version for 10 computers. A yearly license cost is $120 per device.
Source: www.tecmint.com

Terraform Reviews

Do not use AWS CloudFormation
Terraform, on the other hand, will occupy your shell until the directly-involved AWS service coughs up an error. No additional tooling is required. Terraform will just relay the error message from the affected service indicating what you’ve done wrong.
Top 5 Ansible Alternatives in 2022: Server Automation Solutions by Alexander Fashakin on the 19th Aug 2021 facebook Linked In Twitter
Although Terraform and Ansible are both server automation tools, there are still a few significant differences between the two. For example, Terraform is declarative while Ansible allows for both procedural configurations and declarative configurations. Also, Ansible works best as a configuration management tool while Terraform leans towards cloud orchestration.
35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category
Terraform is compatible with a wide range of Cloud providers, including Azure, VMWare, and AWS. If you’re subscribed to multiple cloud providers, Terraform is a great way to ensure that they have consistent configurations.
Why we use Terraform and not Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, or CloudFormation
Example: Terraform and Ansible. You use Terraform to deploy all the underlying infrastructure, including the network topology (i.e., VPCs, subnets, route tables), data stores (e.g., MySQL, Redis), load balancers, and servers. You then use Ansible to deploy your apps on top of those servers.This is an easy approach to start with, as there is no extra infrastructure to run...
Ansible overtakes Chef and Puppet as the top cloud configuration management tool
Breaking these results down year-over-year, use of Ansible grew from 36% in 2018 to 41% in 2019--surpassing Chef, which grew from 36% to 37%, as well as Puppet, which grew from 34% to 37%. Rounding out the list is Terraform, which experienced a jump from 20% to 31%, and Salt, which increased in usage from 13% to 18%.

Social recommendations and mentions

Terraform might be a bit more popular than Puppet. We know about 32 links to it since March 2021 and only 31 links to Puppet. 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.

Puppet mentions (31)

  • Puppet best practice
    At betadots, during our Puppet code reviews, we often receive requests for a comprehensive summary of best practices and guidelines. In response, we've compiled this article to delve deep into Puppet's best practices and implementations. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Puppet container version schema update
    Prior the repositories have been handed over from Puppet Inc to Puppet Community, the container images were using the Puppet server and PuppetDB versions, which were used inside the container. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • What is the Role of AI in DevOps?
    There was still some confusion between Devs and the Ops folks with their tasks, and even though the word ‘DevOps’ was popping up here and there, it wasn’t used as a concrete methodology/practice in organizations. Hence, during this phase, the focus shifted from merely merging teams to fostering a cultural change emphasizing collaboration, shared responsibility, and continuous improvement. Automation played a... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Using Let's Encrypt with the Puppet Enterprise console
    Had an itch I've been meaning to scratch for a while. I build my Puppet environment using Terraform, which makes it nice and easy to tear things down and rebuild them. That is great, but it does leave me with an issue when it comes to the console SSL certificates. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • How One Of The Oldest Forms Of Theater Survived 2000 Years: Artists in China have been making colourful puppets for 2,000 years. It is one of the oldest forms of entertainment. Audiences watched shadow puppets tell stories about heroes and villains, lovers and fantasy figures.
    Hi friend! This sub is for the configuration management tool, Puppet. You may be looking for r/puppetry or r/puppeteer. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Terraform mentions (32)

  • Scaffolding Serverless Web Application on AWS
    Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you build, change, and version infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform code is in the terraform directory. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Integrating Terraform with CI/CD Pipelines
    In recent years, there has been a significant shift towards automation of infrastructure deployment processes. One popular tool that has emerged as a key player in this space is Terraform, an open-source infrastructure as code (IaC) software tool developed by HashiCorp. This article will explore how Terraform can be integrated into continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines using GitHub Actions as an... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Deploying Your Outdoor Activities Map with Terraform
    Terraform is an open-source infrastructure-as-code software tool created by HashiCorp. It allows you to define and manage your infrastructure as code, making it easy to provision and manage resources across multiple cloud providers. With Terraform, you can ensure consistent and repeatable deployments, making it an ideal choice for automating your cloud infrastructure. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Trigger CI using Terraform Cloud
    Continuous Integration(CI) pipelines needs a target infrastructure to which the CI artifacts are deployed. The deployments are handled by CI or we can leverage Continuous Deployment pipelines. Modern day architecture uses automation tools like terraform, ansible to provision the target infrastructure, this type of provisioning is called IaaC. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Using Let's Encrypt with the Puppet Enterprise console
    Had an itch I've been meaning to scratch for a while. I build my Puppet environment using Terraform, which makes it nice and easy to tear things down and rebuild them. That is great, but it does leave me with an issue when it comes to the console SSL certificates. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Puppet and Terraform, you can also consider the following products

Setapp - Your shortcut to prime apps on Mac, an App Store alternative

Rancher - Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service

Metavine Platform - Metavine Platform is a comprehensive Platform-as-a-Service that help businesses build agility and compete effectively in the digital world by enabling them to iterate and create apps quickly.

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

Konfigure - APARTMENTS | VILLA | WORKSPACE | RETAIL

Packer - Packer is an open-source software for creating identical machine images from a single source configuration.