Open Source Puppet vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Open Source Puppet
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Open source Puppet provides tools to automate the configuration and management of IT infrastructure. It is supported by a community of users and contributors. Users can get involved by fixing bugs, influencing new feature direction, publishing modules, and engage with the community to share knowledge and expertise.N/A
Ansible
Score 9.1 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
Open Source PuppetRed 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
Open Source PuppetAnsible
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
Open Source PuppetRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Considered Both Products
Open Source Puppet

No answer on this topic

Ansible
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
We prefer Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's scalability and human friendly coding to the more developer heavy platforms.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Our org was using puppet and burning too many people-hours just touching the scripts, troubleshooting, and maintaining why changes were made. Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform as it was much easier to code and follow.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
As I said earlier, Red Hat Ansible remains a top choice because it is a perfect combination of multiple capabilities. Terraform is good in IAC but not in config automation. Puppet is well-suited for developers, but not for system administrators and infrastructure integrators. …
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Easier to use and adapt
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Puppet is more constant state management for us than Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a more one off configuration then we transfer over to a pupper configuration for steady state.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
I used puppet prior to moving to open source Ansible and eventually to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. I appreciate the agentless approach of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and feel that its deterministic approach to applying code is superior to puppet
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Ease of use, once you understand how to configure the tool, everything is a piece of cake. It runs pretty fast also, can use GITLab to manage our playbooks. Security options is great, can setup granular security depending on each team using Red Hat Ansible Automation …
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
There's 0 comparison. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform leaves them in the dust. It is easier to configure and wipe playbooks for, and has way more community support and documentation making it a no brainer.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
It's agentless. Not needing to deploy and maintain an agent on a system I want to maintain is invaluable.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
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 …
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Much easier to use and understand.
Chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is much easier to setup than Puppet, because it is agentless.
The Ansible community seems to be more active than Puppet's in the recent years.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform does not require learning a programming language where Puppet …
Best Alternatives
Open Source PuppetRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Small Businesses
IBM Terraform
IBM Terraform
Score 8.8 out of 10
IBM Terraform
IBM Terraform
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
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Score 9.1 out of 10
Automox
Automox
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.1 out of 10
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Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Open Source PuppetRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(288 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(8 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(180 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
Open Source PuppetRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
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.
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Pros
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
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.
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Cons
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Perforce Software
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.
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Usability
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
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.
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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.
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Support Rating
Perforce Software
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.
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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
No answers on this topic
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.
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Return on Investment
Perforce Software
No answers on this topic
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.
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