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Chef & Puppet vs. ECS / EKS
What is the difference between using Chef and/or Puppet to administer applications and infrastructure on AWS versus containerization with ECS and EKS.
I'm pretty familiar with ECS and somewhat familiar with EKS, but I have zero knowledge of Chef and Puppet outside of knowing their names and reading for about 5 minutes on their respective websites.
Would someone please provide a simple, concise explanation of the differences between Chef/Puppet and ECS/EKS, along with example usages of Chef/Puppet vs. containerization?
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- DevOpsContainers
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- English
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These are different things. Chef/Puppet are configuration management systems used to build/manage/deploy applications and infrastructure including container images and containers. ECS/EKS are container platforms where you would run/schedule your container images to be executed and provide a service/function. So as a very basic example specific to containers,
Build container images: Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, etc. Deploy container images: Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, etc. Run and schedule container: ECS, EKS, AKS, GKE, PKS, OpenShift, etc.
As mentioned by another user: Chef and Puppet are Configuration Management tools, while ECS/EKS are Container Orchestration tools.
You can create a Chef recipe to, for example, setup and configure an ECS Task Definition, but not the other way around
These are different layers of the DevOps Stack
Chef and Puppet are configuration management tools that define infrastructure as code - they handle server setup, software installation, and environment configuration. Their focus is maintaining consistent system states across your infrastructure.
ECS/EKS are container orchestration platforms that schedule, run, and manage containerized applications. They handle container deployment, scaling, networking, and health monitoring.
The simplest distinction:
- Chef/Puppet configure the servers and infrastructure
- ECS/EKS run and manage the containers on that infrastructure
For production environments, these technologies are often complementary rather than competitive. As outlined in Kapstan's blog on Internal Developer Platforms, modern DevOps requires integration between infrastructure, configuration, and orchestration layers. An IDP like Kapstan can serve as the connective tissue between these components, providing a unified interface that simplifies the entire application lifecycle from infrastructure provisioning to container deployment.
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