TerraForm VS Ansible:

What is the difference between Terraform and Ansible? Terraform is an open-source platform designed to provision cloud infrastructure, while Ansible is an open-source configuration management tool focused on the configuration of that infrastructure.

Orchestration vs Configuration Management:

Orchestration/provisioning is a process where we create the infrastructure – virtual machines, network components, databases, etc. Whereas, on the other hand, configuration management is a process of automating versioned software component installation, OS configuration tasks, network and firewall configuration, etc

What is Terraform?

Terraform enables you to provision, manage, and deploy your infrastructure as code (IaC) using a declarative configuration language called HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).

Key features of Terraform:

• State management: Terraform tracks resources and their configuration in a state file.
• Declarative code: Users describe the desired state of their infrastructure, and Terraform manages it.
• Widely adopted: Terraform supports over 3k providers.(vendors) Declarative language: You can divide your infrastructure into multiple reusable modules. (Templates)

What is Ansible?

Ansible is a software tool designed for cross-platform automation and orchestration at scale. Written in Python and backed by RedHat and a loyal open-source community, it is a command-line IT automation application widely used for configuration management, infrastructure provisioning, and application deployment use cases.

Key features of Ansible:

• YAML: A popular, simple data format that is easy for humans to understand.
• Modules: Reusable standalone scripts that perform a specific task
• Playbooks: A playbook is a YAML file that expresses configurations, deployments, and Orchestration in Ansible. They contain one or multiple plays.
• Plays: Subset within a playbook. Defines a set of tasks to run on a specific host or group of hosts.
• Inventories: All the machines you use with Ansible are listed in a single simple file, together with their IP addresses, databases, servers, and other details.
• Roles: Redistributable units of organization that make it easier for users to share automation code.