28 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
28 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
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---
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layout: "intro"
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page_title: "Serf vs. Fabric"
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sidebar_current: "vs-other-fabric"
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---
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# Serf vs. Fabric
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Fabric is a widely used tool for system administration over SSH. Broadly,
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it is used to SSH into a group of nodes and execute commands. Both Fabric
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and Serf can be used for service management in different ways.
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While Fabric
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sends commands from a single box, Serf instead rapidly broadcasts a message
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to the entire cluster in a distributed fashion. Fabric has a number of advantages
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in that it can collect the output of commands and stop execution if an
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error is encountered. Serf is unable to do these things since it has no single
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destination to send logs to, nor does it have any control flow. However,
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Fabric must be provided with a list of nodes to contact, whereas membership
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is built directly into Serf. Additionally, Serf is able to propagate a message
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within seconds to an entire cluster, allowing for much higher parallelism and
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scalability.
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Fabric is much more capable than Serf at system administration, but it is
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limited by its execution speed and lack of node discovery. Combined together,
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Fabric can query Serf for nodes and make use of message broadcasts where
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appropriate, using direct SSH exection when and where output is needed.
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