terraform vs ansible

https://blog.gruntwork.io/why-we-use-terraform-and-not-chef-puppet-ansible-saltstack-or-cloudformation-7989dad2865c

这段话解释了terraform 和ansible的区别, terraform描述最终状态, ansible对应过程.

一个是configuration managment tool, install and manage software on existing servers
一个是provisioning tool, designed to provision the servers themselves

Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and SaltStack are all configuration management tools, which means they are designed to install and manage software on existing servers. CloudFormation and Terraform are provisioning tools, which means they are designed to provision the servers themselves (as well as the rest of your infrastructure, like load balancers, databases, networking configuration, etc), leaving the job of configuring those servers to other tools. These two categories are not mutually exclusive, as most configuration management tools can do some degree of provisioning and most provisioning tools can do some degree of configuration management. But the focus on configuration management or provisioning means that some of the tools are going to be a better fit for certain types of tasks.