Dell VxBlock System 1000 vs. IBM DevOps Code ClearCase vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

VBlock is extremely well-suited for reliable delivery of virtualized mixed workloads. VBlock provides necessary hardware abstraction that allows for, uninterrupted by hardware failures, continuous delivery of critical services that otherwise do not provide hardware failure resiliency. VBlock is not the best solution from a financial standpoint for cost-sensitive solutions that are programmed for software resiliency.

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IBM Rational ClearCase might be better suited for a smaller / simpler code base. Larger code bases really slow it down... but then again there are better alternatives out there for source control

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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.

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• Single contact for vendor support.
• Fully Tested and integrated.
• Best of breed products combined.

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• Rational ClearCase is excellent for handling versioning and branching. No other tool I've used has the depth that ClearCase has when it comes to handling complex branching scenarios and identifying where certain versions of particular files are within a particular configuration.
• Rational ClearCase handles parallel development of many dependent applications really well.
• The use of ClearCase Views to switch between projects and configurations is extremely convenient as opposed to the local workstation model of the competitors.

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• 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.

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• Product is not simple to manage.
• Product is very expensive. Documentation is too complicated to understand.

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• Extremely buggy.
• Sometimes the repository gets locked for no reason.
• Slow.

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• 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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I spoke on this topic today!

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Local expertise and vendor presenece

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If development is centrallized to one location and your company releases hundreds of customized versions of your software per year, then ClearCase is the best tool for managing the complexity of multiple versions of customized software. If your company has globally distributed development, then I'd recommend Team Foundation Server over ClearCase. If your organization uses Agile Methodologies, then I'd recommend TFS with GIT.

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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.

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• VBLock has eliminated unforced downtime occurrences in the environment.
• VBlock support model has significantly reduced amount of effort allocated to hardware installation and support activities and firmware maintenance.

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• Managed code versioning for many years.
• Only one person can edit code at a time - slows processing down.
• IBM is an expensive product to support.

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• 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.

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