Alternatives to Ansible
Automate configuration and deployments across your machines. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Ansible
Automate configuration and deployments across your machines.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Ansible.
Salt
Open-source automation framework for remote execution, configuration management and orchestration across many servers.
Salt combines remote execution, configuration management and event-driven automation, but it needs its own control infrastructure and concepts such as states, grains and pillars.
Puppet
A configuration management and infrastructure automation tool that enforces the intended state of servers.
Puppet is a paid, closed-source tool that enforces declared server state and corrects drift, with its own configuration language and a Puppet Forge module library.
Chef
An infrastructure automation platform for configuration management, compliance audits and workflow orchestration across servers.
Chef is a paid, closed-source enterprise platform using policy-as-code with built-in scheduled compliance auditing, sold through sales-led pricing and requiring considerable setup.
CFEngine
A configuration management and automation system that keeps servers in a defined, compliant state.
CFEngine uses a lightweight agent suited to large fleets with drift prevention, but it has its own policy language and keeps its web UI in the Enterprise edition.
Rudder
Open-source configuration management and compliance platform for Linux and Windows systems.
Rudder adds continuous enforcement, compliance reporting and patch management across Linux and Windows fleets, with some features tied to commercial offerings.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
AWX
A web interface, REST API and task engine for running and scheduling Ansible automation.
Semaphore UI
Run infrastructure automation jobs from a web dashboard.
Pulumi
An open-source infrastructure as code tool that defines cloud resources in general-purpose programming languages.
Rundeck
A self-hosted runbook automation server that lets chosen users run existing scripts, tools and jobs.
StackStorm
A self-hosted, event-driven automation platform that connects apps and services through rules and workflows.
PDQ Deploy
On-premises Windows tool for deploying software, running scripts and pushing configuration changes to computers.
