Ansible vs. Puppet: Which Is Right for Your Team?

When evaluating configuration management tools, IT teams often find themselves choosing between Ansible's agentless simplicity and Puppet's enterprise-scale compliance capabilities. Both platforms automate infrastructure management, but they serve different organizational needs and deployment scenarios. Understanding their core differences helps teams select the tool that aligns with their scale, expertise, and operational priorities.

Ansible vs. Puppet at a glance

Here's how these leading configuration management platforms compare across key decision factors.

Overview of Ansible

Ansible is an agentless infrastructure automation platform that uses declarative YAML-based playbooks to manage configuration, application deployment, and orchestration across distributed infrastructure. Named a leader in Forrester's Infrastructure Automation Platforms Wave (Q4 2024), Ansible is the most widely adopted configuration management platform, holding more than double Puppet's market share.

The platform's defining characteristic is its agentless architecture, using SSH for Linux/Unix systems and WinRM for Windows, which eliminates the need to install and maintain proprietary agents across managed infrastructure. This push-based model enables immediate deployment and simplified orchestration workflows.

Key Features:

• Agentless architecture with SSH/WinRM connectivity
• YAML-based playbooks with human-readable syntax
• Native multi-cloud support (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Configurable parallel execution with job slicing for horizontal scaling
• Enterprise security integrations (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, CyberArk)
• Network automation across multi-vendor infrastructure (Cisco, Juniper, F5)
• Native CI/CD integration with GitOps workflows
• Automation Controller with role-based access control

Ideal for: Organizations prioritizing rapid deployment, agentless management, and multi-cloud automation with teams seeking minimal learning curve and fast time-to-value.

Overview of Puppet

Puppet is an agent-based configuration management platform that uses a declarative domain-specific language to enforce desired infrastructure states continuously. Operating on a client-server architecture, Puppet excels at enterprise-scale compliance automation and regulatory enforcement across 49+ operating systems.

The platform's strength lies in its continuous configuration automation approach, where agents continuously monitor infrastructure against defined baselines and automatically remediate configuration drift. Puppet Enterprise provides policy-driven management with built-in CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIG compliance profiles, making it particularly valuable for regulated industries requiring automated security hardening.

Key Features:

• Agent-based continuous desired state enforcement
• Puppet Domain-Specific Language (DSL) for infrastructure as code
• Support for 49+ operating systems and platforms
• Built-in CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIG compliance automation
• Puppet Forge with 6,000+ community modules
• Advanced configuration drift detection and automated remediation
• Enterprise reporting and analytics dashboards
• ServiceNow CMDB integration for ITSM workflows

Ideal for: Enterprise organizations managing complex, large-scale infrastructure (1,000+ nodes) in regulated industries requiring continuous compliance automation and sophisticated configuration drift management.

Side-by-Side Feature Comparison

When to Choose Ansible vs. Puppet

Choose Ansible if you need:

• Rapid deployment without agent installation overhead
• Agentless management for environments where agent deployment is impractical
• Multi-cloud orchestration with native cloud provider integrations
• Minimal learning curve for teams new to configuration management
• Fast time-to-value for deployments under 500 nodes
• YAML-based simplicity for infrastructure as code
• Network automation across heterogeneous infrastructure
• GitOps workflows with native CI/CD integration

Choose Puppet if you value:

• Continuous compliance monitoring with automated drift correction
• Enterprise-scale performance for 1,000+ node deployments
• Built-in regulatory compliance (CIS Benchmarks, DISA STIGs)
• Mature cross-platform support across 49+ operating systems
• Sophisticated configuration management with declarative DSL
• Long-term infrastructure governance and audit capabilities
• Established enterprise integrations with ITSM platforms
• Dedicated platform teams with configuration management expertise

Both tools serve legitimate enterprise needs. Ansible optimizes for deployment speed and simplicity, while Puppet prioritizes long-term governance and compliance at scale.

How Siit Integrates With Both Tools

Ansible and Puppet handle what happens on your servers. Siit handles everything that happens before and after: the requests, approvals, and coordination across teams. When someone needs a configuration change, environment provisioning, or compliance review, Siit routes those requests through proper approval workflows in Slack or Microsoft Teams with full context from connected systems like Okta and Jamf.

Neither Ansible nor Puppet solves the coordination overhead that eats your day. Siit's AI agents automate the cross-departmental handoffs between IT, HR, and Finance so your team spends less time routing requests and more time running infrastructure.

Start your free trial with Siit and stop being the human API between departments.