Canonical Landscape vs pyinfra

Canonical Landscape manages Ubuntu desktops, servers, cloud instances, IoT devices, and other Ubuntu systems from a central portal. Administrators can handle updates, packages and repositories, run scripts remotely, set role-based access, and monitor machines. It can alert on updates and graph temperature, disk and memory use, system load, and custom metrics. One instance can manage up to 40,000 machines, with options to scale further. Deployment choices are Canonical-hosted SaaS, Managed Landscape, and self-hosted software; SaaS is bundled with Ubuntu Pro. A free SaaS account with Ubuntu Pro covers up to five machines. Managed Landscape costs $6,861 a year per physical machine on public clouds, VMware, OpenStack, or LXD, or $9,470 a year per physical machine on bare metal. No self-hosted price is listed; Ubuntu Pro is its main licensing mechanism. Landscape has a scriptable API and can integrate with configuration management, monitoring, and ticketing systems. Self-hosting requires the organization to install, host, and maintain it. SaaS does not currently offer repository mirroring or custom external identity-provider configuration.

pyinfra is a free, Python-native tool for automating infrastructure across servers. It connects over SSH to run commands concurrently and idempotently, using Python deploys and inventories. Operations can describe a desired host state or issue specific commands, and `--dry` previews per-host changes before applying them. The project says it works from one host to 10,000, with parallel execution and real-time output. Target machines need a shell and SSH, but no agent, daemon, state file, or control plane. Documented connectors include SSH, Docker, Terraform, and the local machine; operations cover package managers, files, services, databases, security, and containers. It runs wherever Python runs, with Mac, Linux, and Windows listed as control systems. Python 3.10 or later is required; pyinfra 3.5.1 and later supports Python 3.10 through 3.13. The software is MIT licensed. The installation guidance recommends keeping pyinfra and its dependencies current and installing as a regular user rather than as root or with sudo. Help is directed to Matrix and Stack Overflow, while bug reports go to GitHub issues.