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Ask HN: Your thoughts on a fast configuration management tool
I had the idea of building a faster alternative to Ansible/Chef. One that is really fast (I had issues at a past workplace where Ansible couldn't keep up with the scale).
I built an MVP with Go & NATS. Since Go is a compiled language, everything is really fast. I'm talking basic tasks (like creating files, changing permissions, etc.) are in the order of milliseconds. Other tasks like "apt update" etc. are longer due to the bottleneck being apt of course.
I wondered if this could have potential. If this is a tool you could see yourself using / paying for. Or perhaps I'm trying to solve the wrong problem and speed isn't an issue with configuration management?
The project is progressing well overall, but there are some major complications to using a language like Go (dynamic processing requires a lot of reflection, asynchronous logic, and more).
- jhickok 3y agoThe creator of Ansible is doing just that but in Rust: https://news.itsfoss.com/ansible-creator-new-rust-platform/ https://news.itsfoss.com/ansible-creator-new-rust-platform/
- aintathrowaway 3y agoOh wow. Thanks for sharing this. Well this means the idea might be solid, but I guess it will be tough to do it better than Ansible's creator.
- jhickok 3y agoHonestly the more the better. Ansible at scale has always struggled with speed, but I personally would prefer a rainforest of options.
- melezhik 3y agoThe bottleneck is not a tool, but what it does by doing “configuration management”, most of the time it repeats the same, well idempotent operations, which take time. This should be addressed not by tool but by a proper design.