DevOps Tools
There’s been a lot of cool tools released since VMware released vSphere back in 2008. Some tools, like wine, have gotten better with age.
Let’s looks at 3 automation software solutions sometimes referred to as DevOps Tools: Chef, Puppet & CFEngine.
And in case you’ve never heard of DevOps tools, this post will provide a high-level description.
Many IT organizations have started using them to simplify and automate their server (cloud) management. Another key feature they provide is configuration management. Note: The information below is what each of these vendors is saying about their tool, it will be up to you to test and verify whether it’s true.
First, there’s Chef by Opscode.
Reality-Based Automation for the Cloud
“Chef is an open-source systems integration framework built specifically for automating the cloud. No matter how complex the realities of your business, Chef make it easy to deploy servers and scale applications throughout your entire infrastructure. Because it combines the fundamental elements of configuration management and service-oriented architectures with the full power of Ruby, Chef makes it easy to create an elegant, fully automated infrastructure.”
Video: Opscode Chef and Automated Testing with CI by Brian Scott
Second, there’s Puppet by PuppetLabs
Puppet Enterprise
“Puppet Enterprise is IT automation software that gives system administrators the power to easily automate repetitive tasks, quickly deploy critical applications, and proactively manage infrastructure changes, on-premise or in the cloud.Puppet Enterprise automates tasks at any stage of the IT infrastructure life-cycle, including Provisioning, Discovery, OS & App Configuration Management, Build & Release Management, Patch Management, and Infrastructure Audit & Compliance.”
Video: Puppet At Stanford University – Digant Kasundra
Third, we have CFEngine 3 by CFEngine
Configuration Management Software for agile system administrators.
“CFEngine automates large-scale IT computing infrastructure: ensuring the availability, security, and compliance of mission-critical applications and services. Based on flexible open source configuration management software, CFEngine configuration management products are highly scalable through decentralized, autonomous agents that can continuously monitor, self-repair, and update the IT infrastructure of a global multi-site enterprise – with negligible impact on system resources or performance.”
O’Reilly Webcast: CFEngine 3- Empowering the Next-generation Sysadmin
Conclusion:
In this post, we’ve covered briefly 3 software solutions many organizations have started using to automate their environment provisioning process, as well as handle code deployments and releases. Do you have a DevOps tool preference you would like to share with us?
I prefer Chef!