Micro Focus Asset Management X (formerly HP Asset Manager) is enterprise-class IT asset management (ITAM) solution acquired by Micro Focus from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, supporting change and configuration management and license management.
$79
per month per agent
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.
Asset Manager is great for people who understand the Software Development Lifecycle and are familiar with the terminology, however for a new assistant, or a new novice user, the software can seem over-whelming with the rather confusing terminology and a multitude of tabs that open up. It's definitely great software to use for a professional PM, however an assistant would be lost in the tools being offered.
Red Hat Ansible automates server management, configuration updates, and deployments across our server infrastructure, keeping everything consistent, reducing human error, and saving time. Also provides detailed reports on what is done and uses role-based access controls to keep systems secure by controlling who can make changes.
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).
Need more video tutorials - Although HP has great FAQs and has included the keyword search for topics, but some video tutorials would be great to help a new user.
Overwhelming at times. I remember when I first started using the software, just the magnitude of tools were too much. However even though I don't use half the tools even now, just the possibility of more functions available to me, makes it a great software.
Secure Log-in - I would like HP to invest into single sign-on where you don't need to put in your user ID & password constantly. A push notification to a personal device would a great added feature.
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.
It's overall pretty easy to use foe all the applications I've mentioned before: configuring hosts, installing packages through tools like apt, applying yaml, making changes across wide groups of hosts, etc. Its not a 10 because of the inconveinience of the yaml setup, and the time to write is not worth it for something applied one time to only a few hosts
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.
HP Asset Manager is definitely enterprise grade, whereas the other asset Management programs I have are specific to either one industry or a smaller locations that might not need the deep analysis & reporting functionalities & tools that are provided by HP. The cost is indeed higher than other programs like Fox Graphic Tracker (Internal Software) and Samange that I have used in the past, but for a large enterprise with multiple ongoing projects, HP Asset Manager is the way to go !
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.
HP Asset Manager is great for compliance purposes. We know we have all the licenses in place when needed for upgrades or yearly reviews. Saves us times.
Ability to track & print reports saves PMs time in quartely reviews.
Great way to prepare for any presentations by the use of analytical tools which saves us money in investing in other software for presentation purposes.
POSITIVE: currently used by the IT department and some others, but we want others to use it.
NEGATIVE: We need less technical output for the non-technical. It should be controllable or a setting within playbooks. We also need more graphical responses (non-technical).
POSITIVE: Always being updated and expanded (CaC, EDA, Policy as Code, execution environments, AI, etc..)
