Quick start for InSpec and ServerSpec also comparison of them

InSpec and ServerSpec are Infrastructure Testing tools based on Ruby. InSpec is newly added into ThoughtWorks Tech Radar.

Prerequisite:

RVM, Ruby (>2.2) and rubygems should be installed.

Get Started for InSpec:

1. Install InSpec.

   gem install inspec

2. Write and run the InSpec script according to its API document.

   You can reference the script here.

   Using inspec exec inspec.rb to run and check the result.

   As you can see the script is pretty much the same as the one we used for ServerSpec, you can reference that script here. The instruction of running it is in this article.

   And there is another official article talking about the migration from ServerSpec to InSpec (we can also see the differences of resources between the two).

3. To generate a json file as the test result, we run inspec exec sample_inspec.rb --format json >report.

   And it will generate the test result named “report” every time the test runs.

Comparison between InSpec and ServerSpec:

• InSpec has 98 types of resources but ServerSpec has only 41.

• InSpec has more comprehensive documents, you can reference here, and it even has a series of detailed tutorials.

In general, I would suggest to use InSpec for Infrastructure Testing in new projects.