Item: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Rating: 9
Author: Marshall Wells

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in conjunction with Satellite to manage our RHEL instances. We are moving into migrating AIX automation to the use of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and we are adding Windows to the fold. Our initial thrust into those operating systems will be related to configuration management and patching. We anticipate using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for other functions tied to surveys. An example would be allowing the help desk for a particular customer to only change passwords for their users on their systems.

Pros and Cons

Ensures the desired state is present on a system or device.
Allows for conditional application of changes.
Utilizes robust RBAC to limit actions to those allowed a user.
Intriguing integration with Event-driven Ansible.
Execution environments that allow older playbooks to continue to function.

YAML is hard for many to adopt. Moving to a system that is not as white space sensitive would likely increase uptake.
AAP and EDA should be more closely aligned. There are differences that can trip users of the integration up. An example would be the way that variables are used.
Event-driven Ansible output is not as informative as AAP.

Return on Investment

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform relieves system administrators of tedium in relation to having a device at a desired state
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has help reduce patching times because it can run multiple streams to multiple devices

Alternatives Considered

Puppet Enterprise

We were Puppet users. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform made more sense to us because of the focus on Ansible content to support our AIX systems and RHEL systems. We have also seen that the learning curve for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is better than we experienced in our Puppet deployment.

Key Insights

Do you think Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's feature set?

Yes

Did Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Red Hat OpenShift

Likelihood to Recommend

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is well suited to ensure that systems are in a specific state - when it is run against those systems. More tooling in the area of periodic scanning would be helpful for compliance folks. In addition, it would be helpful to be able to import a profile to use as a baseline and derive playbooks based on those. One should not necessarily rely on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to keep a device from drifting. It is not a Tripwire that will detect and revert a change quickly. However, it could do well if used for periodic scans. Event-driven Ansible shows promise. If it is better integrated with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in terms of things like the approach to variables it could become more widely used more quickly.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform