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+---
+layout: post
+category: devops
+title: Where we talk about ansible and chef
+---
+
+I've been using [Chef](http://www.opscode.com/chef/) for some time now, but it was always via [Vagrant](http://vagrantup.com),
+so a few weeks ago I decided to get more familiar with it.  A friend
+of mine had set up a Chef server for his own use and was OK to let me use
+it for my personal server.  There was a four days weekend for Thanksgiving
+coming, so it was the perfect occasion to take a better look at it,
+and to re-install my Linode server with Chef.  And since it was a
+really long weekend, I also decided to take a look at [ansible](http://ansible.cc), another
+tool to push stuff to your server.
+
+I'm not going to talk about installation, configuration, set up and
+all that kind of stuff, there's enough material available around (blog
+posts, articles, books, etc).  Instead, I will talk about my
+experience and share my (very valuable) opinion (because, clearly, the
+world deserve to know what I think).
+
+## Writing cookbooks for Chef
+
+For the few of you who don't know, cookbooks, in Chef's world, are a
+group of files (templates, static files) and code that are used to
+automate your infrastructure.  Usually, you'll create a cookbook for
+each of your application (one for nginx, one for MySQL, etc).
+
+I've a few services on my server (git, gitolite, Jenkins, graphite,
+collectd, phabricator, ...), and I wanted a coobook for each of them.
+I've started by looking for the one already existing (there's a lot of
+them on GitHub, on the
+[opscode's account](https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/)), and I tried to use
+them without any modification.  Usually, a cookbook will let you set
+some configuration details in your role or node to override the
+defaults it provides (like
+the password for MySQL, or the path where to put logs).  So what I did
+was to set the interesting cookbook as a git submodule in my cookbook
+repository.  Unfortunately, for almost all of them, I had to give up
+and import them in the repo, so I could edit and modify them.
+
+That's probably my biggest complaint with cookbooks: I doubt code
+re-usability is possible.  You can use a cookbook as a base for your
+own version, but either they are too generic; or sometimes you need a
+workaround; or they do way too many things. And as a result, you need to edit the
+code to make them behave the way you want.
+
+In my opinion, developers/ops should just publish [LWRP](http://docs.opscode.com/essentials_cookbook_lwrp.html) (Lightweight
+Resources and Providers) and templates, that's the only thing that I
+can see as really re-usable (take a look at
+[perl-chef](https://github.com/dagolden/perl-chef), I think that this one is a good
+example).
+
+## Using ansible
+
+ansible was a new tool for me.  A few friends mentionned it to me last
+October when I was at the [OSDC.fr](http://osdc.fr) and it was also suggested to me by a
+colleague at work.
+
+This tool is definitely less known that Chef, so I'll give a quick
+introduction.  In ansible world, you write "playbooks", which are the
+orchestration language for the tool.  That sounds very similar with
+Chef, but the main difference is they are not actual code, but a
+scenario with actions.
+
+On the web site of the project, there's a quote saying:
+
+> You can get started in minutes.
+
+and for once, that's true.  I only had to read the first page of the
+documentation, and I was able to write a very simple playbook that I
+was able to evolve very quickly to do something actually useful.
+
+Another difference with Chef is that they don't incite you to share
+your playbooks, but instead to share your modules.  Modules could be
+compared to Chef's LWRP.  They are Python code to do something
+specific (like the [`pip`](http://ansible.cc/docs/modules.html#pip) module, to install Python package, or the
+[`template`](http://ansible.cc/docs/modules.html#template)'s one).
+
+## Chef vs Ansible
+
+For now, I've decided to stick to this: use Chef for my supporting
+application (nginx, MySQL, etc) and ansible for my own applications.
+
+So far, I prefer ansible to Chef.  There's definitely less available
+material about ansible on the net, but the quality is better, and the
+main documentation is very (I insist on the *very*) well organized.  I've never spend more than
+10 minutes looking for something and to implement it.  I can't say
+the same with Chef: the wiki is confusing; there's way too many
+cookbooks available; their quality is very disparate.
+