Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Reviews

Our company uses the solution for automations, patching, scheduling, and installations. 

We have 500 users throughout the company and two or three people per team who handle ongoing maintenance. 

The solution has improved our productivity and functionality. The automations we have done for patching save a lot of time and effort for many users. 

We always have plans to increase usage because we have automations in the pipeline for installations and patching. 

The solution is very simple to use and we chose it for the simplicity. 

Being an Agent Plus makes our lives easier. 

There is always room for improvement in features or customer support. 

I have been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable with no issues. 

I am a user so am not familiar with scalability. Another team handles the platform and its scalability. 

Technical support is good and very helpful. 

I rate support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

We previously used Puppet. 

The setup is pretty straightforward. The government on our side makes things a bit tough but that has nothing to do with the solution. 

We implement the solution in-house. 

We also considered UDeploy but did not get to the point of comparing it to the solution.

The solution is a wonderful tool and is simple to learn and use. There is much flexibility in the open-source environment when using the solution. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We are primarily using Ansible for automation purposes as it is a configuration management tool. It is utilized for various activities such as DNS activity, changes to web servers, virtual host settings, and other day-to-day tasks, all of which are templated in Ansible.

Ansible allows us to manage a multitude of servers efficiently. We can deploy configurations and changes effectively and gather detailed reports. This means we have substantial control and flexibility in managing our servers.

I can do anything with Ansible. It allows control over thousands of servers, whether virtual or physical. The flexibility to manage deployments, configuration changes, and reporting is highly valuable. Ansible is containerized, making it easy to pull updated containers for automation.

There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions. The Subscription model presents some limitations, and there is room for improvement in making the Ansible navigator more flexible for open-source use. Installation can also be challenging, especially for graphical components.

I have been working with Ansible since 2012.

Ansible is very stable. There are no issues concerning the system's stability when managed with Ansible.

Ansible provides fantastic scalability. This tool allows us to manage a significant number of clients without limitations, making it suitable for large-scale operations.

I rate Red Hat's customer support for Ansible at nine points out of ten. Customer support for Ansible is excellent, and any issues we have encountered have been resolved promptly.

Positive

Setting up Ansible is relatively straightforward. Installing the core product takes about thirty minutes to an hour. However, fully setting up Ansible with additional servers might take around two to three hours.

The implementation is handled by myself and one other colleague.

There is a need for more flexibility in the subscription model, but I do not have detailed insights into the pricing and licensing setup.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to configure our infrastructure. It is mainly used to configure the whole activity.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a good choice when you have different distribution platforms. If you have an infrastructure with Ubuntu, VPN, and Red Hat distributions, Ansible can integrate these platforms through a small inventory file, such as a custom image or file.

The role-based access control (RBAC) feature is the most valuable, especially when used with Azure Galaxy Infinity.

Ansible is good at managing applications or devices on the existing infrastructure but cannot provision those devices.

The tool should allow us to create infrastructure. It has everything when it comes to management, but it lacks the provisioning aspect.

I have been using the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for three years. We're using the latest version of the solution

The solution’s stability is good. I rate it a ten out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.

The customer service and support are good. It is good if you know how to create and operate it, but it can be difficult for someone who does not have the knowledge of how to configure the YAML file. There is some technical difficulty here. 

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have seen an ROI as we are still using the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

The pricing is okay.  

I would definitely recommend using the solution. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We deploy the production environment using the provisioning for Terraform. We provision the cluster we need. If we need three or four nodes, like provisioning for hardware, OS provisioning, and bootstrap provisioning, we will use Terraform. After Terraform, we have to do any configuration changes. To install some packages, I do the cluster configuration changes and use Ansible with Terraform. I will integrate and deploy products based on the Ansible configuration files by writing playbooks.

There are many configuration management tools currently in the market. If there is a huge cluster, we use Chef. For minimum nodes, we use Ansible.

I'm using the latest version. It's version 2.13.4. The solution is deployed on AWS cloud.

I like the agentless feature. This means we don't install any agent in worker nodes.

The solution requires some Linux knowledge.

I have worked with Ansible for eight years.

The solution is stable.

Scalability is not a requirement for this solution because it's a configuration management tool.

We also use Chef.

Setup is straightforward. There's no complexity. We had to learn some Linux information before setup.

The length of deployment depends on the nodes. It will show if everything is deployed or not, any changes, and if there are any failed nodes.

Security patching is enough for maintenance.

I installed the basic version myself. We also have the enterprise version, which is open source.

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10. 

So far, the main thing we've been doing with it is using it to automate our monthly patching of servers. Since we have the whole inventory, we can patch this project's servers. We can use the exclude, exclude others, and, in one hour, do a patch that would take people one night to do.

Managing our inventory is a big pain point. Right now, we have Satellite, but we can tie it in with Satellite, so we can actually manage things and automate the entire deployment stack, instead of trying to grab things from tickets, then generating Kickstart, and using that to get things in Satellite. That doesn't work well. We can do the whole deployment stack using the inventory share between Tower and Satellite.

I've been doing patching from the command line, but for other people, it's nice to have the Dashboard where they can see it, have it report to our ELK stack. It's far more convenient, and we can trigger it with API and schedules, which is better than doing it with a whole bunch of scripts.

• I like the inventory management. It's a very nice, simple, concise way to keep all that data together.
• The API allows us to use it even for things that are not Ansible.

On the Dashboard, when you view a template run, it shows all the output. There is a search filter, but it would be nice to able to select one server in that run and then see all that output from just that one server, instead of having to do the search on that one server and find the results. It would be nice to just be able to view per-server. Sometimes the server has some problems that we're going to find in some places. It would be nice not to have to search for them.

We haven't had any issues with its stability or with bugs, so far.

I think it will meet our needs going forward. We're going to put, not a whole lot of servers, just 3,000 servers, and that's going to be spread out. We're going to do an HA Tower. Right now, we're only doing 350 servers for our trial runs. We haven't had any problems with that, we just keep them all up at once.

I actually haven't had to contact tech support on any issues. My colleagues have worked with them for OpenShift, but for Tower, we haven't had a reason yet.

I felt the setup was really straightforward. The set up is with the Ansible Playbook. I just skimmed through that and I found that it does everything I need. And then I just ran it.

I did an upgrade two weeks ago. That was simple: Download the new one, run it. I did a back up before, just in case, but everything went smoothly. No problems.

Puppet is the main configuration management we have right now. The goal is that Ansible will do all the administration and deployment, and do all things with a baseline, to meet our standards. Then Puppet is going to be taking care of a lot of the rest of the configuration for all the different projects.

We primarily use it for network automation and security or CVE resolution.

We save thousands of hours a year doing security updates and configuration updates. We save our administrator's time by pushing updates. It is a one-click solution, and all they have to do now is pull down whatever they need for their configs. It saves about 4,000 man hours a year.

If you imagine Tier 1, 2, and 3 administrators, I am sitting more at the Tier 3 level. We are able to push out more complicated configurations. We can do just an SSH push to thousands of devices. It saves the time of our administrators from having to go into the console of every device. They do not have to SSH into every device and manually type in those configs. We can resolve security issues within a matter of minutes rather than days.

You have the initial big push to get Ansible set up and running in the environment, but once it is there, any tweaks or changes involve just edits to the code base, and you are good to go. It is not at all intensive.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has not reduced the training required to learn how to automate things. We are starting from scratch, so there is always going to be a learning curve associated with it. The more you peel that onion, the more involved it gets, and the more you have to learn about it.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform helps connect teams, such as developers, operations, or security so that they can automate together. It is hard to get anything done if all of those players are not talking. Knowledge bases are not siloed anymore. Previously, we did not have a cross-talk or sharing of information. Now that we have the platform, we have to share knowledge back and forth where we are pushing an update and they are telling us what is broken. There is constant feedback. There is a good feedback loop.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has helped to reduce the time we spend on low-value or repetitive tasks. It is hard to quantify the time savings because of the mass scale at which we use it, but it would be within thousands of man hours a year.

My guess is that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has saved us costs, but I am not in a position to see those numbers.

When you have an enterprise-level number of network devices, the ability to quickly push out security updates to thousands of devices is the biggest thing.

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.

I have been using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for the last eight months. 

It is pretty good. Usually, if we have any issues, they are user-induced. When Ansible goes down or there is an issue like that, it is usually something we have done at the backend rather than Ansible itself.

It is very scalable. The way we use it is that we tie it in with another app to touch all of our devices and to deploy any configurations or whatever we need to push. Our code base sits on Git, and then we use another company for monitoring our devices. With one tower, or two for redundancy, we are able to push to more than 5,000 devices.

It has been good so far. There have been a few cases for which we reached out to them to get some help. I have not interacted with them personally, but I have heard good things. I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have not used any similar solution.

I was not there when we set it up. In terms of the deployment model, we still have one that is in the VM, and we are also using the containerized version. It is still Ansible Tower.

It has saved us thousands of man hours.

I was not there when we set it up. We have been using it for about four years. I am not sure about what happened before then.

I would rate Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform a nine out of ten.

I am using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform as a part of the scale-up of the nodes in OpenShift.

Mostly, we use the solution for upgrading-related stuff.

The most valuable feature is that Ansible is agentless.

For my day-to-day operations, the one module that I am using is very good, and it is giving the intended results. Ansible has a lot of modules to perform your day-to-day activities. I don't think there will be room for improvement based on the current instances or use cases.

The scalability of the solution has some shortcomings. Thus, the solution's scalability has some room for improvement.

Though not much, I have experience with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for two years. I am a customer of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The initial setup for Ansible is very easy.

I'm not using the solution in this containerization. In the present environment, we are not using something like Red Hat Ansible Tower. We are using just an Ansible node which is something we use as a server for accessing all of our nodes and managing all of the nodes. Also, building an Ansible node as a bastion or jump host is a pretty easy task.

Actually, when you are building Ansible Tower, I think you need to go for the pricing. For other things, you don't need to do that, I guess. So it's a pretty good tool to automate your day-to-day or daily tasks or activities that can be done with Ansible. It has a lot of features, helping materials, and modules, which will be helpful in automating one's day-to-day jobs. It's pretty easy for us to upgrade and work with the nodes on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

If you go with any other tools, like Chef or Puppet, they are very hard to configure. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is agentless and pretty straightforward. It will reduce a lot of our headaches in general.

I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.

We have a lot of Red Hat servers in our data center environment, so we use this solution to manage the configuration, deploy and push configuration management. In addition, we use the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate deployment tasks.

We can manage all the configuration consistency between all our servers. It is a configuration management tool, so we can easily manage our consistent configuration course over different Red Hat or Linux servers. We have not used Windows recently and are using only Linux now.

We like the GUI-based interface for the tower. Before, we only had a command-line interface to run all the Ansible tasks. Now, the Ansible tower provides the complete GUI functionality to run, manage, and create the templates and the Ansible jobs. This includes the code and YAML file we can create. The GUI interface is the added advantage of this solution, including some integration with the different plugins.

It should support more integration with different products. For example, it is for network security automation, and with the VMware product, they don't have an integration for NFTX right now. So they should include this integration capability so we can automate more tasks with this solution.

We have been using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform since 2021, and we are using version 3.2. It is deployed on-premises.

It is a stable solution. 

It is a scalable solution and is based on your node license. We are using more than 400 servers right now, and it requires one senior system engineer for maintenance and deployment. We plan to increase the usage using Windows automation.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

We used a Puppet configuration in the past. We staged with Puppet and then moved to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

The initial setup and deployment were easy, but the first two days of operations were a bit complex. We completed the deployment in-house.

There is a return on investment as a technical person. It has saved time and effort in maintaining the deployment environment. So on the technical side, it's saved lots of time and effort on the configuration.

I believe the cost per node basis is around $125 per node.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. Regarding advice, for the deployment, I would suggest working on inventory first. They should also consider their use cases and which workflow they want to implement. In the next release, they should have VMware tight interrogation.