An enterprise-grade configuration management system that provides controlled access to software assets.
N/A
Ansible
Score 9.2 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
Salt
Score 6.2 out of 10
N/A
Built on Python, Salt is an event-driven automation tool and framework to deploy, configure, and manage complex IT systems. Salt is used to automate common infrastructure administration tasks and ensure that all the components of infrastructure are operating in a consistent desired state.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform requires little to no configuration on the nodes to manage the systems. However, this means that the inventory source of Truth must come from somewhere else. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is able to manage things beyond typical nodes …
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.
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
Integration with CyberArk is not comfortable at this moment, but we are trying to make it work. If it works, it'll be more helpful to us. Integration with CyberArk, like the wall, takes the password automatically from there and executes certain things in a secure and beneficial way. Once we have the playbooks and the inventory, we can run many services under one charge. That's more advantageous.
SaltStack is a very well architected toolset and framework for reliably managing distributed systems' complexity at varied scale. If the diversity of kind or number of assets is low, or the dependencies are bounded and simple, it might be overkill. Realization that you need SaltStack might come in the form of other tools, scripts, or jobs whose code has become difficult, unreliable, or unmaintainable. Rather than a native from-scratch SaltStack design, be aware that SaltStack can be added on to tools like Docker or Chef and optionally factor those tools out or other tools into the mix.
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.
It reduces custom scripting efforts because everything can be scripted in simple, human-readable YAML playbooks.
Not only servers, but also network devices, VMs, Containers, Kubernetes clusters, etc., can be automated via Ansible, showcasing its extensive list of supported devices.
It is agentless, which makes it lightweight and allows for easy integration into CI/CD and GitOps pipelines.
Many Tier-1 telcos use Ansible for Day 0/1/2 automation of RAN, transport, and core infrastructure (e.g., network function lifecycle management, NE configuration push, patching VNFs).
Targeting is easy and yet extremely granular - I can target machines by name, role, operating system, init system, distro, regex, or any combination of the above.
Abstraction of OS, package manager and package details is far advanced beyond any other CRM I have seen. The ability to set one configuration for a package across multiple distros, and have it apply correctly no matter the distrospecific naming convention or package installation procedure, is amazing.
Abstraction of environments is similarly valuable - I can set a firewall rule to allow ssh from "management", and have that be defined as a specific IP range per dev, test, and prod.
I can't think of any right now because I've heard about the Lightspeed and I'm really excited about that. Ansible has been really solid for us. We haven't had any issues. Maybe the upgrade process, but other than that, as coming from a user, it's awesome.
Even is if it's a great tool, we are looking to renew our licence for our production servers only. The product is very expensive to use, so we might look for a cheaper solution for our non-production servers. One of the solution we are looking, is AWX, free, and similar to AAP. This is be perfect for our non-production servers.
Overall, the product is excellent, with daily-use features for both large and small infrastructure. Ansible does its job quickly and ensures compliance, keeping the environment up to date and safe from open vulnerabilities. Large-scale inventory management and license management. Industry standard followed by best practices to maintain continuity. Budget-friendly compared to other products.
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.
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.
We haven't had to spend a lot of time talking to support, and we've only had one issue, which, when dealing with other vendors is actually not that bad of an experience.
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.
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.
We moved to SaltStack from Puppet about 3 years ago. Puppet just has too much of a learning curve and we inherited it from an old IT regime. We wanted something we could start fresh with. Our team has never looked back. SaltStack is so much easier for us to use and maintain.
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.
We manage two complex highly available self-healing (all infrastructure and systems) environments using SaltStack. Only one person is needed to run SaltStack. That is a HUGE return on investment.
Building tooling on top of SaltStack has allowed us to share administrative abilities by role - e.g. employee X can deploy software Y. No need to call a sysadmin and etc.
Recovery from problems, or time to stand-up new systems is now counted in minutes (usually under eight) rather than hours. This is a strategic advantage for rolling out new services.
