Opsworks and Chef are very related Configuration Administration (CM) instruments. Opsworks is definitely constructed on the Chef framework, then personalized for Amazon’s big cloud setting AWS. Hosted Chef is an IaaS answer from Chef mum or dad firm Opscode, by which they host the Chef server for you, and it in flip manages and communicates together with your nodes, that are almost certainly additionally hosted in a cloud infrastructure similar to Amazon’s EC2 infrastructure. So each options are evolutions of the standard CM software, now tweaked for cloud-hosted environments. Let’s peek behind their respective curtains.
What They Are
Chef is a well known CM software, one of many huge boys out there along with PuppetLabs’ Puppet. Chef is focused at builders and devops fairly than to sysadmins. It makes use of a pure-Ruby DSL within the CLI, and it additionally has a nice-enough GUI, however one which’s nonetheless just a few leagues beneath Puppet and even Opsworks. Opscode then went additional and now provides purchasers the choice to cloud-host their servers – Hosted Chef. This setup is smart primarily if the nodes to be managed are additionally cloud-based, so Hosted Chef features a complete library of API primitives for many cloud infrastructures – Amazon’s AWS, Home windows Azure, Rackspace, and many others.
Opsworks is derived from a model of Chef known as chef-solo. It is a free, server-less mode by which your nodes can entry cookbooks with out requiring entry to a central server. It’s a nice concept as a result of it permits entry to the quite a few Chef cookbooks created by others and accessible on the internet, with out the tedium of first having to arrange your individual server. The draw back (there needed to be one) is that you simply lose entry to all of the helpful stuff a server offers – node knowledge storage, authentication and authorization, cookbook scheduling and persistency, and so forth. The analogy right here is just like that in a domain-controlled Home windows community, versus a peer-to-peer decentralized community.
Opsworks builds on Chef by creating stacks and layers. As per the Opsworks documentation web page: “A stack is a container for all the Amazon EC2 instances and other resources that you want to manage together. Within a stack, you define layers that describe how to provision and configure instances. A stack can have multiple layers. Within a layer, you can specify, for example, packages to install, Amazon EC2 security groups to add, and Elastic IP addresses to assign. This structure gives you the flexibility to define different instance configurations. You define an app by specifying what layer it applies to, the code to run, and some basic configuration. You then deploy the app to the instances on the layer.”
One could surprise why Amazon needed to create its personal CM software in any respect. In any case, virtually all the main CM’s, together with Chef, have already got API’s and interfaces for managing EC2 situations. And this prices Amazon nothing – the CM distributors are solely too joyful to create AWS interfaces for his or her merchandise to allow them to faucet into its enormous buyer base. Truly, in creating Opsworks Amazon now has a way of tying up customers into the AWS ecosystem. They wished to intentionally make it troublesome to unbundle an app or server constructed on AWS, and an vital piece of the puzzle was the server-management module. In Opsworks they now have precisely this. It wouldn’t have been potential with a Third-party CM, but on the similar time they didn’t need the headache of making their very own software from scratch – in spite of everything, they’re within the IaaS/ PaaS enterprise, not the CM enterprise. So adopting an already widespread software like Chef, then customizing it for AWS, was a win-win for them, plus their customers can get entry to a big library of Chef cookbooks on the internet. It might look a loss for Opscode, as a result of why would anybody now use Chef to handle AWS situations? However keep in mind, Opsworks solely provides Chef-solo and received’t cannibalize paying Hosted-Chef prospects from Opscode. And what Opscode could lose there could be offset by the large publicity and road cred they are going to get as AWS’s CM software of alternative. Additionally, anybody with Opsworks expertise and likewise has non-AWS servers to keep up will already be conversant in Chef by means of Opsworks, and can probably select the already-familiar Chef.
Platforms, Pricing & Assist
Opsworks is Chef-based, so it’s accessible on the identical platforms as Chef – Linux, Unix and Home windows.
Commonplace Hosted Chef prices $300 and covers 50 nodes, and Enterprise Hosted Chef prices $700 and covers 100 nodes and has extra options to make it price extra. Opsworks is completely free. You’re already paying for the AWS servers you’re utilizing, so Amazon ‘kindly’ offers you a software for managing your servers.
Assist for each is excellent. Chef has a big, energetic person neighborhood, and documentation can be complete. However there have been complaints that the Chef method of doing issues is difficult to grasp for newbies, and a lot of the documentation doesn’t assist as a result of it’s largely geared toward skilled customers. Opsworks is backed by Amazon, so help and documentation is superb. Since AWS is used not solely by IT techie sorts, but in addition by laypeople establishing their very own servers, Amazon has included a blisteringly easy to grasp walkthrough and person information. In actual fact, a number of new Chef customers on dialogue boards are reportedly turning to not the Opscode-created Chef web site, however to the Opsworks person information!
Abstract
So there you’ve gotten it. If you happen to have been mulling over a Hosted-Chef vs. Opsworks dilemma, you now know most of the variations between them and may decide. When you’ve got an EC2 setup, this resolution is very related for you. Opsworks is totally free, nevertheless it solely provides the Chef-solo model, so in the event you want a correct server-based Chef setup, you continue to have to go for Hosted Chef (or the usual Chef in the event you don’t want a hosted answer). And naturally, Opsworks solely works inside AWS, however Hosted Chef can be utilized for nearly any hosted-server answer.
Though Opscode doesn’t lose a lot on this explicit deal, Amazon’s encroachment right into a market that it beforehand completely left as much as these Third-party distributors may very well be a trigger for fear; not just for Opscode, however for all CM distributors. It might (or could not) be an ominous sign that the Amazon goliath is broadening its choices to its personal prospects and shifting into market areas it wasn’t hitherto focused on. This reminds us of Microsoft’s personal related adventures within the late 90’s and early 2000’s, when it began to lock out smaller Third-party creators of Home windows add-ons by creating its personal instruments and bundling them along with Home windows. The textbook instance of technique this was the well-known near-total destruction of the business Netscape Navigator browser by Microsoft’s free-with-Home windows Web Explorer. Will Amazon equally pull out the rug from beneath its companions’ ft? Time will inform. Additionally check out the pros-cons chart beneath.
Execs
Cons
Opsworks
Free. Fully free!
Nice documentation and person guides.
Solely Chef-solo accessible.
Solely works in AWS environments.
Hosted Chef
Can work on many alternative cloud environments.
Glorious help and steering from Opscode.
Not simple to be taught and deploy.
Documentation nonetheless missing
References
Prepared to avoid wasting time and streamline your belief administration course of?
