Puppet Enterprise vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Puppet Enterprise
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Puppet Enteprise is an IT automation and configuration management solution that enables users to manage and automate infrastructure and complex workflows. The vendor states Puppet Enterprise combines both model‑based and task-based capabilities in a way that enables organizations to scale their multi-cloud infrastructure as their automation footprint grows, with more flexibility from both agent-based and agentless capabilities.N/A
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (acquired by Red Hat in 2015) is a foundation for building and operating automation across an organization. The platform includes tools needed to implement enterprise-wide automation, and can automate resource provisioning, and IT environments and configuration of systems and devices. It can be used in a CI/CD process to provision the target environment and to then deploy the application on it.
$5,000
per year
Pricing
Puppet EnterpriseRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic Tower
5,000
per year
Enterprise Tower
10,000
per year
Premium Tower
14,000
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Puppet EnterpriseAnsible
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Puppet EnterpriseRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Considered Both Products
Puppet Enterprise
Chose Puppet Enterprise
As I mentioned before Ansible is a great tool. There is no question about it. It has very simple syntax (YAML), is very easy to learn, and is scalable as well. But the only thing that Ansible lacked at that time was the actual agent that have to go into each server. Ansible …
Chose Puppet Enterprise
[Both] products are comparable. There is a good open source community for each, but we found Puppet to be the most mature for our specific use case.
Chose Puppet Enterprise
I have not used any other Configuration Management System since cfengine back in about 2007 so I have little current input on alternatives to Puppet having never used them, though Chef seems to have gained some traction as has Ansible.
Chose Puppet Enterprise
We evaluated Chef and Ansible. Puppet Data Center Automation was cleaner and we were more familiar with the product.
Chose Puppet Enterprise
Puppet has a very wide user base with many organizations tht support it as well as conferences and events. Puppet DSL is based in Ruby while the server is now in Clojure providing ease of configuration with the power of scale. Puppet is a great entry point into the world of …
Ansible
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Ansible is much easier to use and configure than Puppet.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
It was much simpler to deploy and use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in our enterprise environment. Red Hat has great training to get our users up to speed. YAML is easy to write (although watch out for spacing) and run playbooks. We can easily generate infrastructure …
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
All three of these competitors are agent based. I did not want an additional service that needed to run absolutely everywhere. I also did not want to maintain a load balanced cluster of master servers that grows in resource requirements as your infrastructure scales.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
My experience with Puppet and Chef is limited, but as a total non-programmer Ansible was just worlds easier for me to implement.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Ansible is much easier than Puppet, more enterprises are switching from Puppet to Ansible due to ease of use. Ansible has integration modules which allow you to transition from Puppet or Chef to Ansible. IT Automation space has a CAGR of 200%+ what are you doing to not get left …
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Ansible has unique features in terms of server managing and configuring. It is easy to use and fits the Red Hat Linux well since they are closely related. Our servers are mostly Red Hat, so it makes sense to use Ansible. But we are still exploring which is the best.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Ansible is a great product, which we really love as it is compatible running along side and with other DevOps tool. The integration features allows other teams to participate in our shared objective. Ansible is easy to use as many programmers are familiar with Python and RHEL. …
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
In the time of integration, we chose Ansible instead of Puppet because it was simpler to use, based on Python and didn't require additional server environments to run. Of course, there are a lot of different alternatives like Chef or Salt Stack.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Ansible is sufficient for our purposes because our configurations are relatively simple. Chef and Puppet would work better for more complex configurations. Also, our applications are deployed using Docker which simplifies our configuration requirements. An organization with …
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
I haven't used Puppet personally, but I believe Ansible is a robust solution which can serve many purposes. Puppet I'm sure is customizable in similar ways, I just don't have the experience to speak intelligently on the subject.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
I have used Puppet, Chef during my career and Ansible seems to be the most efficient tool by far, in terms of its implementation, configuration and ease of use.
Top Pros
Top Cons
TrustRadius Insights
Puppet EnterpriseRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Highlights

TrustRadius
Research Team Insight
Published

Ansible and Puppet Enterprise are both open source configuration management tools designed to ensure consistency among physical and logical assets. Both products are used by businesses of all sizes, though mid-sized organizations and large enterprises are most likely to use them.

Features

Ansible and Puppet Enterprise both offer essential configuration management features, including task execution and asset management. Both configuration management tools also have some standout features that set them apart from each other.

Ansible offers simple installation and implementation compared to Puppet Enterprise because it is agentless and written in Python, which makes it quick to install on Linux systems. Additionally, Ansible commands can be written in most programming languages, making Ansible a flexible choice that works for many organizations. Similarly, Ansible also offers easy scalability, which can be important to organizations that anticipate future growth.

Puppet Enterprise provides a complete GUI for simple tasks and management, while a Ruby-based command-line interface handles complex tasks. Additionally, Puppet Enterprise performs scheduled checks every 30 minutes to ensure that all configured nodes are in proper condition. Ansible offers a similar feature, but only in its premium packages, while Puppet Enterprise includes it in all pricing packages. Puppet also enjoys a broader community of contributors, which has resulted in higher availability of tutorials and documentation. These contributors have also built many modules that can be added to Puppet Enterprise, and the best ones are marked as usable by Puppet.

Limitations

Though Ansible and Puppet Enterprise both provide robust features, they also both have a few limitations that are important to consider.

Ansible has a GUI, but it is not fully developed and can sometimes fall out of sync with the command-line interface. An organization should expect to be using the command-line interface for most tasks with Ansible. Documentation and support resources for Ansible are available from vendors, but free resources aren’t as abundant as those available for Puppet Enterprise.

Puppet Enterprise isn’t as flexible as Ansible in that it doesn’t support as many languages and isn’t as easily scalable. Additionally, the installation of Puppet Enterprise can be tricky compared to Ansible as a Puppet Enterprise agent has to be installed on every managed node.

Pricing

Ansible and Puppet Enterprise are both open source technologies, meaning their source code is available for free for organizations that want to host and manage it on their own. Vendors are also available to host or implement either configuration management tool.

Ansible implementation, support, and management are offered depending on the size of the business in question. Ansible offers two pricing tiers. The Standard pricing tier includes 8×5 support and essential configuration management features. The Premium package includes 24×7 support including management and upgrades.

Puppet Enterprise implementation and support are similarly priced depending on the organization in question. Puppet Enterprise also offers a free pricing tier for a maximum of 10 nodes.

Best Alternatives
Puppet EnterpriseRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Small Businesses
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.5 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Puppet EnterpriseRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(12 ratings)
9.0
(63 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
Puppet EnterpriseRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Perforce Software
Puppet is good enough to get the job done, you can use it to automate deployments and maintain files and configurations, if this is all you're looking for it's great. If you're looking for more control over your systems as a whole without having to write your own scripts or install multiple configuration management systems then Puppet is not what you're looking for.
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Red Hat
The thing I mentioned earlier where we're constantly dealing with federal regulations or new agents that they want us to install and deploy and just getting those out in a consistent manner in a canned installation via Playbook is ideal
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Pros
Perforce Software
  • Provides a clear map of how a system is configured
  • Eases the creation of a system in a specific cluster as it is scripted in code
  • Simplifies configuration changes to a cluster or to every system such as rolling out vhost configurations, updating ldap roles, NFS mounts, etc
  • The syntax is very easy to read and carries a lot of fluidity once the language is learned.
Read full review
Red Hat
  • Makes it easy to create and share automation in one central hub.
  • Ansible content collections give me the ability to reuse code, making it rapid to carry out complex IT processes.
  • Event-driven automation allows me to reduce manual tasks: it is rapid to know which action to take and respond automatically by receiving events from external apps automatically.
Read full review
Cons
Perforce Software
  • The setup of Puppet is a nightmare compared to ansible. Anyone watching a youtube video can easily set up ansible with minimal IT knowledge. All one needs is the source IP addresses and we are good to go. Setting up Puppet is a more hands-on task and pushing the puppet agents to all the boxes is another issue. If the installation and setup were simplified like ansible that would attract a lot of people to this platform
  • The syntax of the code for Puppet is not as easy as ansible. Ansible simply follows a YAML format and it's like typing in normal English. Even complicated tasks can be written by just understanding YAML syntax. Perhaps Puppet needs to revisit the lanugage used and try to come up with a much simpler lanugage for writing code. This will make day-to-day usage easier.
Read full review
Red Hat
  • Workflows should have more flexible paths than just success or failure.
  • The upgrade process can be challenging with differences in security and environment.
  • There is an opportunity to add CICD functionality into the tool.
  • For development, it would be nice to have the option of editing a repo directly from AAP to allow quick tests/reruns. Then, allow it to push the updates back or create a new branch/PR in GitHub.
  • The RBAC is good but could use improvements. One example would be an option that allows admins to assume the access of another user to validate it works as expected.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
We are deploying Ansible at all levels of the organization
Read full review
Usability
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
the yaml is easy to write and most people can be taught to write basic playbooks in a few weeks
Read full review
Performance
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
Great in almost every way compared to any other configuration management software. The only thing I wish for is python3 support. Other than that, YAML is much improved compared to the Ruby of Chef. The agentless nature is incredibly convenient for managing systems quickly, and if a member of your term has no terminal experience whatsoever they can still use the UI.
Read full review
Support Rating
Perforce Software
Puppet has top class support. You can simply mail them with their query and they will respond to your query in a timely manner. We do have enterprise license for puppet. Also there is a vibrant community for puppet out there. So even if you dont purchase a premium support option you can simply google your queries and get answers
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Red Hat
There is a lot of good documentation that Ansible and Red Hat provide which should help get someone started with making Ansible useful. But once you get to more complicated scenarios, you will benefit from learning from others. I have not used Red Hat support for work with Ansible, but many of the online resources are helpful.
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Implementation Rating
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
I spoke on this topic today!
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Alternatives Considered
Perforce Software
HPSA is a licensed product and incurs significant upfront investment costs due to COTS licensing. Puppet Data Center Automation has a significantly lower upfront investment and product documentation is more readily available. Chef is a very similar offering, however, at the time our decision was considered, the adoption of Chef vs. Puppet was significantly less in the community.
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Red Hat
AAP doesn't truly stack up against any of the products mentioned except for Aria Automation. But, it is extensible and open and has a lower cost to entry.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Perforce Software
  • Cut deployment times down to around 1 hour from 4-5 hours.
  • Allows us to get a fully running system up from scratch in around 30 minutes.
  • Allows for a more clear view of what is required to get a host running.
Read full review
Red Hat
  • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers automation and ML tools that allow me to automate complex IT tasks.
  • Through automation analytics, it is seamless to gain full visibility into automation performance allowing me to make informed decisions.
  • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform allows me to move rapidly from insights to action.
  • Creating and sharing automation content in one place unify a team in one place hence enhancing real-time collaboration.
Read full review
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