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

---
layout: "intro"
page_title: "Terraform vs. Chef, Puppet, etc."
sidebar_current: "vs-other-chef"
description: |-
  Configuration management tools install and manage software on a machine that already exists. Terraform is not a configuration management tool, and it allows existing tooling to focus on their strengths: bootstrapping and initializing resources.
---

# Terraform vs. Chef, Puppet, etc.

Configuration management tools install and manage software on a machine
that already exists. Terraform is not a configuration management tool,
and it allows existing tooling to focus on their strengths: bootstrapping
and initializing resources.

Using provisioners, Terraform enables 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 easy and reliable.