Overview, study, and comparison of open source automation tools: Ansible, Salt, Chef, Puppet

Considering that companies have an increasing number of servers connected to the network, IT professionals find new ways to execute the same task multiple times. Therefore, systems that can automate tasks on large numbers of machines in parallel are created and are increasingly being used. This thesis aims to compare and evaluate different server automation tools, analyzing their features, advantages, and disadvantages. Technologies considered are based on open source projects, with a free version and a community-oriented license. Closed technology properties for example tools of Amazon, Google and Microsoft are not considered. The thesis analyzes for each technology the historical background, the purpose of that, the community, the main components and some characteristics. Characteristics are the platforms available, the project itself, the architecture and the extensions. Also, it describes some information about the installation and the test of the technology. There are, in the end, some tables and explanations for a comparison point of view of the technologies analyzed. It is provided also a summary overview of the reasons why it could choose one alternative over another.