Terraform: First you use this to create VMs.

Ansible/Puppet/Chef/Salt: Then you use this to install your stuff in the VMs. Just pick one of these and stick with it.

Install k8s with a/p/c/s. :)

K8s is not about configuration management, it’s about dynamic application management. Some parts infringe on areas where CM tools work as well, but k8s is all about managing containerized applications.

Trying to set up flows for ”works on my laptop”-dev, ci/cd, loadtesting, a/b tests, canary releases, autoscaling and rollbacks for multiple teams of devs? K8s really simplifies these things.

The idea is that you have one api spec to rule the whole stack (from a dev perspective). If you go down a more light-weight stack, a lot can still be achieved. More duct tape required though. That being said- I love duct tape!

Ansible can be used to create VMs too. I used to use it to provision AWS instances and to configure them after.

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/list_of_clou...

Never use Ansible, Puppet or Chef. Those are old dead tools.

Those are tools for configuration management. If you instead use packer, docker, you can build your vm/image at build time, and use Terraform to setup vm with that image. Use etcd (in the image set to pull config) or similar key-value for distributing configuration.

Not "setup base vm with terraform" and then "ansible to install and configure it". Just build your vm/container image with the software you want already installed, and a etcd or other pull-configuration from a pre-set source. Done.

Now you dont need configuration-management, and dynamically changing infrastructure, since you moved it to the build-step.

I don't think configuration management tools are dead. I use puppet to build my image with packer. It's way easier than build with a bunch of shell scripts. I agree that you shouldn't use it on live servers.