terraform/website/source/intro/vs/chef-puppet.html.markdown

layout	page_title	sidebar_current
intro	Terraform vs. Chef, Puppet, etc.	vs-other-chef

Terraform vs. Chef, Puppet, etc.

Configuration management tools install and manage tools on a machine that already exists. Terraform is not a configuration management tool, and uses the existing tooling to do what they do best: bootstrap and initialize resources.

Using provisioners, Terraform allows any configuration management tool to be used to setup a resource once it has been created. Terraform focuses on the higher-level abstraction of the datacenter and associated services, without sacrificing the ability to use configuration management tools to do what they do best. It also embraces the same codification that is responsible for the success of those tools, making entire infrastructure deployments just as easy and reliable.