I use the solution for all kinds of automation, network automation, compliance security, software installation, and software configuration. I started using the solution as a configuration management tool, and now I also use it for automation. I also use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform within the CMP platform Morpheus.
Ansible on CentOS 10
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A scalable solution that can be used for configuration management and automation
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution are its configuration management, drift management, workflow templates with the visual UI, and graphical workflow representation.
What needs improvement?
The solution should add a nice self-service portal.
The standard single-node installation is easy. When you have a protection grade installed, and the customer wants DR, it creates a problem. For example, if you have the database built in, but the customer wants to use RDS, you have to tweak it. Then, you have to use the governance policies and everything accompanying them. Some customization takes place, but overall, it's easy if vendors use a straightforward method.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for many years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a very stable solution. I rate Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform an eight out of ten for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Around 10 users use the solution in our organization, a presales and sales company. Around 1,000 users used the solution in my previous organization.
I rate Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform a nine out of ten for scalability.
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup is not it's not hard. The steps to install the solution seem to be easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node. The solution's pricing depends upon the volume.
What other advice do I have?
Users have to lay out how they want to build the solution. They should first build smaller job templates and then add them together to build workflow job templates.
Overall, I rate Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform a nine out of ten.
Stable and scalable automation platform that is highly compatible with other tools
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for provisioning on different providers like VMware, and OpenStack because it was so easy to implement. This product is also helpful to create a job workflow including the approval steps.
It also includes DevOps tools for making an easy automation process.
How has it helped my organization?
It brings a lot of time-saving.
What is most valuable?
The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for three months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is very good. We asked the support team about applications, and they answered us. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used multiple tools in the past three years, but we did not use any other similar product to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was easy. I was not a part of the deployment process, but my team members told me about the deployment process.
What about the implementation team?
The in-house team asked the support team questions.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is an open source product but needs a license subscription to use it. The price depends on the number of nodes supported by the platform (the nodes correspond to a host which can be for example a VM or a data center).
The price is really different depending on the customer's needs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have evaluated other solutions but this is the one that best meets our need for provisioning automation and addresses the different infrastructure and cloud providers we use
What other advice do I have?
The product can be very easy to use, provided what you are using in it. I did not use the product myself, but it was really impressive when they showed the POC process. I rate it eight out of ten.
A good open-source software offering broad support and reliability to its users
What is our primary use case?
We use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in our company to implement a software-defined infrastructure, which involves defining the desired configuration of machines in terms of their components, setup, security, user roles, software deployment, and certificate deployment. With this platform, we are able to set up new environments and manage the lifecycle of instances across various stages, such as development, production, and pre-production. We also use it for routing up and back of new software.
What is most valuable?
Feature-wise, the solution is a good open-source software offering broad support. Also, it's reliable.
What needs improvement?
I think some community projects support Ansible Playbooks, but they often break with version updates. It's a difficult problem to solve. DevOps should have a library with common components to make Ansible more productive when there are updates to Ansible and the operating system. What we need is model-driven, declarative software infrastructure management. However, things tend to break with new versions, requiring a lot of work to fix. It becomes a cost-benefit analysis of reusing old Ansible scripts versus rewriting them from scratch after updates. The problem is that it becomes quite fragile over time, and this fragility is a problem.
If the IDE and auto-completion of the solution are based on Checkpt, it is important to ensure that the AI coding tools support writing in a more declarative way. While I have not yet tried coding with this assistance, Microsoft and Keylabs both offer AI coding assistants. The focus should be on improving the support for Ansible in the area of AI coding. It is crucial to see how well they work with the new versions of Ansible.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for almost five years. My company is an end-user of the solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product's stability is very good. I rate it an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Ansible is a configuration tool that doesn't have to scale like other tools. So scalability does not apply to the solution. Also, it's not a tool used by thousands of users. I am unsure if it can be used to manage thousands of servers. Small teams, like the DevOps team, use the solution. We service large groups of servers with it using a very small team of about two or three and a maximum of four people.
How are customer service and support?
I have never contacted technical support. We use open-source support.
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup process was simple. The solution gets used in various ways, and it's essentially a configuration tool you run from any node with access to other nodes. It has got server versions as well. So, you can use it either way.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We compared it to other configuration management tools before choosing Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. We did not choose others since they were not as centralized. It doesn't need a server since you can run it from your clients, and it doesn't need a central deployment service or server.
What other advice do I have?
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a declarative infrastructure management system that works fine if supported by the environments you use to set up. I rate the overall product an eight or nine out of ten.