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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs UrbanCode Deploy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Release Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (1st)
UrbanCode Deploy
Ranking in Release Automation
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 5.1%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UrbanCode Deploy is 4.3%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Surya Chapagain - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to manage and simple to learn
We use Red Hat a lot. I open tickets for the Red Hat cases, however, with Ansible, I haven't opened any cases. My manager worked with them a bit. If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this.
it_user587571 - PeerSpot reviewer
It offers OOTB plugins for middleware.
By standardizing the automated deployment application process, reducing the amount of errors due to manual steps and by providing visibility into the release cycles of various teams/applications, we've improved our global efficiency by at least 25% and still counting, since we've only used the product for a short period of time.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like the inventory management. It's a very nice, simple, concise way to keep all that data together. And the API allows us to use it even for things that are not Ansible."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its configuration management, drift management, workflow templates with the visual UI, and graphical workflow representation."
"It allows control over thousands of servers, whether virtual or physical."
"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."
"The initial setup is easy and takes a few hours to complete."
"The most useful features are the playbooks. We can develop our playbooks and simplify them doing something like a cross platform."
"Some colleagues and other companies use it and comment that it is easy to use, easy to understand, and offers good features."
"It has improved our organization through provisioning and security hardening. When we do get a new VM, we have been able to bring on a provisioned machine in less than a day. This morning alone, I provisioned two machines within an hour. I am talking about hardening, installing antivirus software on it, and creating user accounts because the Playbooks were predesigned. From the time we got the servers to the actual hand-off, it takes less than an hour. We are talking about having the servers actually authenticate Red Hat Satellites and run the yum updates. All of that can be done within an hour."
"The most valuable feature is the snapshot functionality, which allows us to access previous versions of the artifacts."
"Stable solution that's good for automating the CI/CD pipeline: from development to production."
"The solution handles complex deployments very efficiently."
"The most valuable functionality is the ability to define the deployment process, schedule the deployment and automatically execute the deployments to different environments."
"The stability is good. I haven't experienced any issues."
"It is very easy to make a software release. It used to take us at least a couple of hours to make a release, now we went to production with a new one last night. This new release took me five minutes."
 

Cons

"Ansible has just been upgraded, and the only issue that we are seeing at the moment is that the user interface can be slow. We're currently investigating the refresh period with Red Hat when you click a job and run a job. It seems that the buffer no longer runs in real-time. We haven't discovered whether that's partially an issue with our environment, but Red Hat has come back and said that they're working on a couple of bugs in the background. We've upgraded to that version in the last six months, and that's the only issue that we've seen."
"What I would like to see is a refined Dashboard to see, when I log in: Here are all my jobs, here are how many times they've executed; some kind graphical stitching-together of the workflows and jobs, and how they're connected. Also, those "failed hosts," what does that mean? We have a problem, a failed host can be anything. Is SSH the reason it failed? Is the job template why it failed? It doesn't really distinguish that."
"Ansible could use more public relations and marketing."
"I have seen indications that the documentation needs improvement. They are providing a "How to Improve Your Documentation" presentation at this conference."
"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."
"At this time, I do not have anything to improve. What we struggle with is the knowledge base, but that is more about us having to go and find it and learn the platform on our own rather than an actual Ansible issue."
"From Red Hat Insights point of view, the product is not on top as it is not responding as per the demand...Like on cloud platforms, you can see the main parts of Red Hat Insights, along with the inventory of all your apps. So, that is missing in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform."
"In modern infrastructure, there are more than just servers. The initial server-centric approach in Ansible is a bit strange."
"The technical support of the solution could definitely be improved as PMRs take long to resolve."
"The scalability of this application needs improvement. Changes and variations in the application become bottlenecks as they need to be more seamless and comfortable."
"I would like to see more reporting for container architecture."
"I would like to have the agent up and running at all times, as opposed to only while it is in the DevOps pipeline."
"I certainly would like to have a better way to pass information between deployment steps using UrbanCode Deploy because that's really difficult to do."
"The interface allows access in a number of ways but that can be confusing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
"The cost is high, but it still works well."
"The pricing is okay."
"Like many Red Hat products, they have a no-cost version of the web application (AWX, formerly Ansible Tower), but you are on your own to install and it is a little more complicated than just installing Ansible."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."
"The licensing fees for this solution are based on the number of servers that are being deployed and the number of agents that you have."
"Considering COVID-19, the price is too high."
"The cost of the solution is high but it offers great ROI."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
32%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
68%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Ansible
uDeploy
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
As policy, IBM does not release customer names on non-IBM web sites.  However, public DevOps and UrbanCode Deploy case studies can be found here. IBM's UrbanCode Deploy customers span Small-Medium Businesses to Fortune 500 companies across all industries worldwide.
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. UrbanCode Deploy and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.