Ansible configures servers, Terraform creates infrastructure. They’re not competitors — they complement each other.

Terraform¶

• Infrastructure as Code
• Declarative (HCL)
• Creates/destroys infrastructure (VM, DB, DNS)
• State file
• Idempotent

Ansible¶

• Configuration Management + Orchestration
• Procedural playbooks (YAML)
• Configures existing servers (packages, files, services)
• Agentless (SSH)
• Ad-hoc commands

Example¶

Terraform — create a server¶

resource “aws_instance” “web” { ami = “ami-12345” instance_type = “t3.micro” }

Ansible — configure a server¶

• hosts: web tasks:
• apt: name=nginx state=present
• service: name=nginx state=started

When to Use Which¶

• Terraform — infrastructure provisioning (VM, DB, VPC, DNS)
• Ansible — server configuration (packages, files, services)
• Both — Terraform creates the VM, Ansible configures it

Terraform + Ansible = Complete IaC¶

They’re not competitors. Terraform for infra, Ansible for configuration.