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Discussion on: Why don't you use Ansible ?

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yellow1912 profile image
yellow1912

I'm quite hesitant to use the word wrong :) in any situation. Each person has his or her own circumstances. That said, adding any tool to your stack will always introduce some level of complexity. One has to learn docker, learn how to configure it properly, then how to monitor it and keep it always up.

There are use cases for docker, but it's not an absolute need for all cases.

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simerca profile image
Ayrton

Sorry, i dont want to be agressive, my english is very bad and i don't know what words i should do used.
In our work team operational is the keyword.
So the learning of new technologies is a requirement to evolve and stay operational.
What i want to say is just : if you upgrade your skills you take off complexity from your projects

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yellow1912 profile image
yellow1912

Exactly. If new technologies take off the complexity. When you adapt docker you suddenly have to worry about new security and network connectivity issues:

networkcomputing.com/cloud-infrast...

sysdig.com/blog/7-docker-security-...

It's not a one line command you set it up and forget about it. And then you need to now look at way to maintain your fleet (swarm vs k8). Is this worthy? It depends. But every team has a finite amount of resources. We need to invest wisely, right things at the right time. At certain point when docker becomes a must for me, you bet I will learn it. Not now.

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hi_artem profile image
Artem

Yeah, but ultimately containers and orchestrator done right is much better approach in a long run, although it involves some complexity.

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yellow1912 profile image
yellow1912

You are absolutely right. But it's like saying electric cars are the ultimate vehicles for everyone. Perhaps I only need a skateboard? Not a very good example but I hope you get my point :).

I believe that we should embrace new technologies with care. If a team wants to move to docker, they should learn to set it up properly first. It's very easy to get started with Docker, just a few commands. But to really set it up properly and manage it, we need to spend a significant amount of time (and we should). Until we can really invest the effort, we should not just blindly do it.

Same for Ansible, it's a great tool, but it's not the right solution for every situation. The reason we use tools is to save time and cost. If the specific tool cannot save either then we should consider something else.