Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. Spinnaker

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

Incentivized

Spinnaker suits well for applications which are stateless and can adapt to an immutable architecture of deployment. But for applications which are stateful and cannot afford to spin up new servers for every deployment doesn't go well with Spinnaker. It can handle only deployments which are VM based and cannot support deployments to serverless architecture like AWS Lambda etc.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Fast deployments.
• Can be integrated with a good variety of other products.
• Also provides some insights from your environment.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• It does NOT support CFN based deployments
• Windows based systems finds it difficult to onboard to Spinnaker.
• Pipeline level access authorisation is not there.
• Support for EBS volume encryption is probably missing.
• Attach/detach EBS volumes during deployments is difficult.
• No support to deploy the artifacts without re-creating the servers. Only pure immutable deployment are allowed.
• Open-source - so good and bad!
• Spinnaker on its own has 10 underlying micro services. Managing Spinnaker needs a focussed platform approach.
• User authentication is easy but authorisation management is not straight forward.

Incentivized

We are deploying Ansible at all levels of the organization

Incentivized

the yaml is easy to write and most people can be taught to write basic playbooks in a few weeks

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I spoke on this topic today!

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Pipeline Expressiveness • Self-Service/Override • Visibility of Client Teams • Operability of Client Teams - • High-Quality Integrations (AWS, IHP, Google) • Extensibility – (Ability to add code) • The maturity of Deployment Process • Speed/Ease of Onboarding

Incentivized

• 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.

• By using Spinnaker we are able to deploy new versions of our product quickly.
• A deployment takes in average 2 minutes.
• Our investment on Spinnaker was just time learning it.

Incentivized