Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is well suited to ensure that systems are in a specific state - when it is run against those systems. More tooling in the area of periodic scanning would be helpful for compliance folks. In addition, it would be helpful to be able to import a profile to use as a baseline and derive playbooks based on those. One should not necessarily rely on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to keep a device from drifting. It is not a Tripwire that will detect and revert a change quickly. However, it could do well if used for periodic scans. Event-driven Ansible shows promise. If it is better integrated with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in terms of things like the approach to variables it could become more widely used more quickly.

Incentivized

• For example, when we want to do a deployment of a new software agent or a new piece of code it also helps us to offload tasks to junior team members to where we can just put a series of complicated steps into a playbook and hand it off to an operator level person to coordinate and deploy. Like if it requires an outage or something, they just can focus on coordinating a schedule for doing it, but not on the technical aspects of the task.

Incentivized

• Workflows should have more flexible paths than just success or failure.
• The upgrade process can be challenging with differences in security and environment.
• There is an opportunity to add CICD functionality into the tool.
• For development, it would be nice to have the option of editing a repo directly from AAP to allow quick tests/reruns. Then, allow it to push the updates back or create a new branch/PR in GitHub.
• The RBAC is good but could use improvements. One example would be an option that allows admins to assume the access of another user to validate it works as expected.

Incentivized

We are deploying Ansible at all levels of the organization

Incentivized

the yaml is easy to write and most people can be taught to write basic playbooks in a few weeks

Incentivized

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

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

I spoke on this topic today!

Incentivized

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

• Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers automation and ML tools that allow me to automate complex IT tasks.
• Through automation analytics, it is seamless to gain full visibility into automation performance allowing me to make informed decisions.
• Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform allows me to move rapidly from insights to action.
• Creating and sharing automation content in one place unify a team in one place hence enhancing real-time collaboration.