Item: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are currently transitioning from TrueSight Orchestration to Ansible. Ansible will give us the ability to focus more on enterprise-wide automation as well as the smaller team-by-team cases we were using TrueSight Orchestration for. This will mean the creation of CI/CD pipelines and help connect our silos and reduce blockers in the process.

Pros and Cons

Debugging is easy, as it tells you exactly within your job where the job failed, even when jumping around several playbooks.
Ansible seems to integrate with everything, and the community is big enough that if you are unsure how to approach converting a process into a playbook, you can usually find something similar to what you are trying to do.
Security in AAP seems to be pretty straightforward. Easy to organize and identify who has what permissions or can only see the content based on the organization they belong to.

Ansible doesn't parse data well in some formats. You have to make your inputs pretty before they get to Ansible. WIth our other tools, we can take junk inputs and turn it into usable variables, etc.
Training is very expensive, and our company opted not to do it. Instead, we used classes from Udemy or Cloud Guru. I don't see why Redhat couldn't offer cheaper hands-on training options like that. I would also like to see included in these training classes more focus on writing YAML effectively and to Ansible Lint or codebot standards rather than relying on Lint and Codebot to help fix people's code. I think this also slows the adoption of the product within companies, as without training, many people will stop using the product until they are sure they have the time and bandwidth to learn it. With training, they are given that time and instruction.
There should be clearer documentation around building modules for the HUB. I struggled greatly with the initial folder structure and the requirements of documents like READMEs and requirements.yml files, etc.

Return on Investment

We aren't at the ROI time just yet, but we are still ramping up to that. we do have several jobs in production, but so far have only replaced our old automation tool. The impact isn't there yet, but it's easy to tell that it's coming. We also have more people automating than ever before.

Key Insights

Do you think Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's feature set?

Yes

Did Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform go as expected?

Would you buy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform again?

Yes

Other Software Used

TrueSight Orchestration, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, IBM Integration Bus

Likelihood to Recommend

I know my colleagues on the Windows side of things have felt neglected at Ansiblefest as far as sessions that help them figure out how to integrate the tool with their Windows products. Since Ansible is seen as an enterprise-wide tool, it should better support Windows platforms as well, as everything cannot always be run on Linux or a similar OS. Ansible has been great for our basic needs so far in automation. Still, we do struggle with adoption, and sometimes there are just scenarios where, as a non-developer, trying to adapt to the developed way of thinking is difficult. When i was learning Anisble, I had to learn Git and YAML together, as well as any CLI I needed, or what execution environments were. It's a lot to ramp up to and learn all at once.

AAP Review.

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform