Ansible and Terraform are two very powerful but unique open source IT tools that are often compared in competitive discussions. We often see comparisons of the two tools - but many times, these comparisons are done purely from a “spec sheet” comparison.
The primary difference for their community versions is that Ansible is an multi-purpose automation tool, whereas Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool.
This showcases how Ansible shines as a multi-purpose automation tool versus a discrete infrastructure as code tool.
To help spark some ideas, let’s highlight some Ansible cloud automation use cases today outside of just provisioning and de-provisioning cloud resources.