Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…
$0
Azure VMware Solution
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Azure VMware Solution enables users to run VMware workloads natively on Azure. The user can move VMware-based workloads from the datacenter to Azure and integrate a VMware environment with Azure. This enables users to continue managing existing environments with the same VMware tools already in use while including Azure native services. Azure VMware Solution is a Microsoft service, verified by VMware, that runs on Azure infrastructure.
$10.41
per hour
Ansible
Score 9.0 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
AWS CloudFormationAzure VMware SolutionRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Editions & Modules
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
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
AWS CloudFormationAzure VMware SolutionAnsible
Free Trial
YesNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS CloudFormationAzure VMware SolutionRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Considered Multiple Products
AWS CloudFormation
Chose AWS CloudFormation
The only real comparison would be to Terraform, which is another IaC technology at the infra level. Terraform is cloud-agnostic, which means most popular cloud providers are supported. While AWS CloudFormation is AWS-only. Although, if you consider CDK, CDK for Terraform …
Chose AWS CloudFormation
As we have our whole infrastructure on AWS, that is why we selected AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is better integrated with AWS services than other available products and also provides visibility and tracking on AWS. AWS CloudFormation is free while Terraform
Azure VMware Solution

No answer on this topic

Ansible
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
We chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because, in our experience, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform helps in daily tasks
Features
AWS CloudFormationAzure VMware SolutionRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Configuration Management
Comparison of Configuration Management features of Product A and Product B
AWS CloudFormation
8.2
2 Ratings
2% above category average
Azure VMware Solution
-
Ratings
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
8.1
214 Ratings
1% above category average
Infrastructure Automation8.52 Ratings00 Ratings8.8204 Ratings
Automated Provisioning8.52 Ratings00 Ratings8.2204 Ratings
Parallel Execution8.02 Ratings00 Ratings8.5191 Ratings
Node Management7.52 Ratings00 Ratings8.3181 Ratings
Reporting & Logging7.52 Ratings00 Ratings7.3199 Ratings
Version Control9.02 Ratings00 Ratings7.3182 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS CloudFormation
-
Ratings
Azure VMware Solution
9.1
5 Ratings
10% above category average
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings7.75 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings9.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings9.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings9.35 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings9.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings10.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings9.85 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings9.35 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS CloudFormationAzure VMware SolutionRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Small Businesses
HashiCorp Vagrant
HashiCorp Vagrant
Score 10.0 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
HashiCorp Vagrant
HashiCorp Vagrant
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Automox
Automox
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Automox
Automox
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS CloudFormationAzure VMware SolutionRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(7 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.3
(169 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(5 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(57 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS CloudFormationAzure VMware SolutionRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
I still give it an 8 because it's one of those tools that just quietly does the heavy lifting for you but it can really test your patience when it breaks esp with deep nested stacks. It's perfect for projects where we need clean consistent environments every time. It's less ideal for quick experimental setups like new EC2 configs or Lambda permission tweaks.
Read full review
Microsoft
Cloud-Native Applications: If you are building cloud-native applications that are designed to run on Azure, AVS may not be the best solution. In this case, you should consider using Azure-native services, such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or Azure Functions.Minimal Workloads: If you have a small number of workloads, it may not be cost-effective to use AVS. In this case, you can consider using Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) or other Azure services that are better suited for small workloads.Custom Hardware Configurations: If you require custom hardware configurations or specialized hardware, AVS may not be able to meet your requirements. In this case, you can consider using other Azure services, such as Azure Dedicated Hosts, that offer more flexibility in terms of hardware configurations.Cost-Sensitive Workloads: If you have cost-sensitive workloads, AVS may not be the best solution. While AVS offers many benefits, it can also be more expensive than other Azure services. In this case, you should consider using Azure services that are more cost-effective, such as Azure Virtual Machines.
Read full review
Red Hat
I think it's the best defacto orchestrator for automation because it's so easy to integrate in other tools to it (dynatrace, cyberark, terraform, etc). It is a lot for a new or smaller team to use so I wouldn't recommend it to a new team using Ansible, in that case using Ansible navigator is a better start to understanding playbooks/inventories before diving into the complexity of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. EDA also takes a lot of connectivity between Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and target systems to get working which can be difficult in very locked down envs unless you have approval from many other teams like networking and security.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • All resources can segregated based on stacks which provides greater visibility
  • A complete audit trail of what went wrong while deploying a particular resource
  • Automatically rollbacks if any service as part of CloudFormation results in an error
  • The UI tool is useful
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Provide hardware and infrastructure for hosting VMs
  • Ability to backup and restore between On Premise and cloud
  • Make it easy to implement a DR solution
Read full review
Red Hat
  • Standardize controls and visibility for automation.
  • Provide RBAC and Vault for improved automation security and support.
  • Job Scheduling is much more effective than Cron or other home-grown solutions.
  • The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform API is one of the best features as it makes automation accessible from any other platform.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
  • Slow to create, delete or update.
  • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • More regions to deploy
  • More clarity on billing
  • Reduce latency
Read full review
Red Hat
  • Ansible is still not truly declarative like Terraform.
  • Simple automation is fine, but creating complex, scalable automation scripts is very difficult to learn.
  • For a higher number of nodes, Ansible consumes a lot of resources. It needs the paid version of AAP, which requires a cost.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
We are extremely happy with the use of AAP. It's better than expected, There is almost no limit when thinking of automation. The only problem is that the day to day is consuming a big part of our time. Patching and checking vulnerabilities are virtually killing us. But we can only improve with AAP.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.
Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.
However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.
Read full review
Microsoft
It feels good for our techs who already used VMware on prem. However, there was significant difficulty adjusting to a new networking model.
Read full review
Red Hat
Everything has room for improvement, but Ansible is the best tool out there for what it does and what it can do. There are plenty of features and capabilities that can be added, but it's just a matter of time before it happens.
Read full review
Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
I spoke on this topic today!
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information. Management guide.For information copy of the original. The new virtual Cloning virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information
Read full review
Microsoft
It's very good compared to its competitors as great uptime, easy support and interactive User Interface makes it a wonderful solution.
Read full review
Red Hat
AAP compares favorably with Terraform and Power Automate. I don't have much experience with Terraform, but I find AAP and Ansible easier to use as well as having more capabilities. Power Platform is also an excellent automation tool that is user friendly but I feel that Ansible has more compatibility with a variety of technologies.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • + We can standup a VPC in minutes
  • - It took a lot of inital time to set up
  • + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Cost Savings: One of the key benefits of AVS is that it can help businesses save money by reducing the costs associated with maintaining and upgrading on-premises infrastructure.
  • AVS can help businesses improve their agility by enabling them to quickly provision and scale VMware workloads in Azure.
Read full review
Red Hat
  • First, it keeps our entire server infrastructure aligned with our standards and reduces the time and effort needed to maintain our systems.
  • Automate routine IT tasks to save time, reduce errors, and ensure every server is configured and updated consistently.
  • Tasks that used to take our teams weeks to complete manually now run automatically and reliably, with full visibility, making our infrastructure management more effective and our compliance tracking much easier.
Read full review
ScreenShots

AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview