api: YAML JSON TOON Database
version: 1.0.0
format: json
dataset:
  slug: infrastructure-as-code-tools
  title: Infrastructure as Code Tools
  description: Tools for managing infrastructure through code.
  summary: "Tools for describing infrastructure as code: provisioning tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation and Pulumi, and configuration-management tools such as Ansible, Puppet and Chef, plus newer and adjacent entries such as OpenTofu, the AWS CDK, Crossplane, Packer and Bicep."
  use_when[2]: You are choosing between provisioning and configuration-management tools.,You need the category of an unfamiliar IaC tool.
  caveats[2]: Provisioning (creating resources) and configuration management (setting up what runs on them) overlap but are different jobs.,Licenses and project governance of some tools have changed; check current terms when standardizing.
  related[4]: cicd-pipeline-stages,virtualization-concepts,cloud-service-models,container-orchestration
  category: DevOps
  category_slug: devops
  tags: "devops,iac,terraform"
  view_count: 0
  entry_count: 12
  fields[3]{section,field,type,example}:
    data,tool,string,Terraform
    data,type,string,Declarative
    data,description,string,Open-source tool for provisioning cloud resourc…
data[12]{tool,type,description}:
  Terraform,Declarative,Open-source tool for provisioning cloud resources with HCL.
  CloudFormation,Declarative,AWS service for modeling and provisioning resources.
  Ansible,Procedural,Agentless configuration management and orchestration.
  Puppet,Declarative,Configuration management using a domain-specific language.
  Chef,Procedural,Infrastructure automation using Ruby-based cookbooks.
  Pulumi,Declarative,Infrastructure as code using general-purpose programming languages.
  OpenTofu,Provisioning,"Open-source fork of Terraform maintained under the Linux Foundation, using the same configuration language."
  AWS CDK,Provisioning,Defines AWS infrastructure in general-purpose languages and synthesizes CloudFormation templates.
  Crossplane,Provisioning,Manages cloud resources through Kubernetes custom resources and controllers.
  Bicep,Provisioning,A declarative language for Azure resources that compiles to ARM templates.
  Packer,Image building,Builds identical machine images for multiple platforms from one configuration.
  SaltStack,Configuration management,Remote execution and configuration management using a master-minion or agentless model.