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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. VMware Salt

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Ansible

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/AThe 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

    Score6.2 out of 10
    N/AVMware Salt is an Infrastructure Automation & Configuration Management platform that provisions, configures, deploys, and manages infrastructure components at scale. The solution utilizes an event-driven automation engine to enforce compliant software states across virtual machines, servers, containers, and network devices. The VMware Salt solution is comprised of software components from both VMware and the open-source Salt Project While the Salt Masters and Salt Minions are a part of the open…N/A
    Pricing
    AnsibleSalt
    Editions & Modules
    Basic Tower
    5,000
    per year
    Enterprise Tower
    10,000
    per year
    Premium Tower
    14,000
    per year
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    AnsibleSalt
    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
    AnsibleSalt
    Considered Both Products
    Red Hat
    Chose Ansible
    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has better support.
    Incentivized
    Chose Ansible
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Ansible
    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.
    Incentivized
    Broadcom
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    265 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    210 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    263 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    166 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    201 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    AnsibleSalt
    Small Businesses
    Salt
    Score6.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Perforce Puppet
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Perforce Puppet
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Salt
    Score6.2 out of 10
    Ansible
    Score9.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    AnsibleSalt
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.8
    (292 ratings)
    8.0
    (10 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.2
    (8 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.3
    (184 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.7
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    AnsibleSalt
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    • Managing network hardware should be more native and easy
    • SaltStack should buffer jobs and, when a client returns, make sure it is executed proberly
    • SaltStack should provide basic pillar and states structures to help get newbies started
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    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.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Red Hat
    I spoke on this topic today!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Broadcom
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Broadcom
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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