Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is managing servers through automated deployment, automated management, security patching, and everything in between.
For automating deployments or security patching with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, we use it for Docker Swarm clusters. We install Docker and automate Docker deployment inside the Docker Swarm, checking which are the master nodes and which are the server nodes and connecting them to each other. All of these things are maintained by Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
I have around 100-200 servers that we need to maintain through security patching. We need to perform sudo apt update or install packages inside them and maintain those servers. For that, we use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. We maintain an inventory file and execute everything from there.
What is most valuable?
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us.
The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things.
It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use.
There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform could benefit from improvements in certain areas. Red Hat Tower is available for enhanced functionality, though it operates on a paid model. I found that acceptable.
Otherwise, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very easy to use with Jinja templating capabilities that make it really straightforward. I do not believe there is anything that could be improved with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform that we have not already discussed.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for the past eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In my experience, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is highly scalable. We are currently using 200 servers and we are adding more servers each day. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is easily maintainable and highly scalable.
How are customer service and support?
We are not using Ansible Tower for customer support, so we do not receive official support. However, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has a large community with many written blogs and resources available, making it easy to maintain.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There is no pricing and no licensing required, as Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is always free to use. If you do not use Ansible Tower, then it is definitely free and easy to maintain. Writing playbooks is just like writing a simple Bash script or writing code with clauses and everything.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. We need fewer employees and have saved significant time. The work that previously took two months now takes 10 to 15 minutes. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is automated, so we do not need as many employees to perform manual work. We have fewer employees, which also results in cost savings.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There is no pricing and no licensing required, as Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is always free to use. If you do not use Ansible Tower, then it is definitely free.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, I evaluated other options such as Chef and Puppet, but I did not use them.
What other advice do I have?
The advice I would give to others looking into using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is that it is one of the best Ansible management tools available for servers. You should start using it. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers Jinja templating where you can write your own templates and NGINX configurations. It is very simple to use and you do not need any extra server or additional infrastructure. I give this product a rating of 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Consistent, Scalable Automation That Boosts Stability and Efficiency
What do you like best about the product?
What I appreciate most is how Ansible Automation Platform gives us a consistent way to automate tasks across differnet environments. Instead of everyone writing their own scripts, we can have a centralized, controlled approach that keeps things uniform and reduces errors.
Cloud services, on‑prem servers, or network devices, Ansible connects to everything without needing any agents. This flexibility has made it much easier to scale automation across the organization stacks.
Also, its write once-reuse anywhere motoo help us reuse across multiple projects or environments. This not only speeds up deployments but also ensures the same process runs the same way every time, which has noticeably improved our operational stability.
What do you dislike about the product?
Even though YAML is readable, getting comfortable with writing playbooks, structuring roles, and understanding best practices takes time. My new team members have often needed guidance before they can contribute effectively in our platform.
May be few cases where they struggeled are role structuring, output capturing and reusing andYAML Sensitivity are more prone to error.
UI is helpful, but it introduces extra complexity compared to using Ansible alone. Managing inventories, credentials, and job templates through the controller sometimes feels more complicated than necessary.
These are just my experiences, others may feel it easy though if the have already used CFT or TF.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
First and foremost, It helps us cut down on a lot of manual work. Tasks that used to take hours—like setting up servers or applying patches, confuring predefined softwares like datadog agent, awscli, python etc etc—now run automatically in the background, which saves time and reduces mistakes. It also keeps everything consistent across our systems, so we don’t end up with different configurations causing issues later. Because it works with many types of environments, we can manage everything from one place instead of juggling multiple tools. Overall, it makes our day‑to‑day operations run smoother and help us the team focus on more important tasks or improvements/advancements instead of repetitive tasks that goes on endlessly.
Agentless Architecture and Scalable Orchestration Made Simple
What do you like best about the product?
What I like best is the agentless architecture and human readable YAML playbooks. The platform scales from simple tasks to enterprise wide orchestration without added complexity
What do you dislike about the product?
Performance can be quite unpredictable at scale. For example, large inventories with complex fact gathering can cause slow execution times.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Ansible eliminates repetitive manual tasks, reducing human error and freeing up IT staff to focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine maintenance.
IT Observability Advisor
What do you like best about the product?
The ability to run commands on infrastructure.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing much, since it’s a platform that eases tasks
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are using AAP to react to problems in the observability sphere. We are able to automate incident solving.
Have managed thousands of servers with streamlined configuration processes
What is our primary use case?
I have created resources for the monitoring tech stack with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, especially for setting up one master data center and another data center for different applications routed to the monitoring setup, where I have created Splunk servers and installed all Splunk agents and prerequisites with the help of Ansible, including an Ansible playbook.
I have used the agentless architecture in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, as SSH is agentless.
I use a centralized automation controller in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, called the master setup, where we execute our commands with installed prerequisites, inventory information, and the Ansible playbook, managing other node servers with a passwordless setup.
When creating any server with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, it is a significant advantage because if we set up a Splunk agent in one case, it is necessary for each server. By writing the playbook, the agent is installed immediately during server provisioning, providing us with an edge.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very helpful due to passwordless integration and the ability to interact with multiple servers at once, which is especially advantageous when dealing with thousands of servers.
The integration aspect of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has optimized my IT ecosystem significantly by consolidating multiple tools, such as a CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins, where we validate everything, including testing and SonarQube code quality.
The agentless architecture of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, using the SSH key, makes it passwordless and allows us to push configurations with one click, creating a major advantage.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's main benefit is that it allows us to push configurations to multiple servers without manually visiting each one, maintaining efficiency.
What needs improvement?
I have observed that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform could improve by creating modules for upcoming AI and ML tech stacks, as currently, specific modules for these are not available.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have worked on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, especially Ansible Playbooks, for around three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not encountered any performance issues, crashes, downtimes, or limitations with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
How are customer service and support?
Ansible is a Red Hat product, so they provide all necessary support.
I have not escalated any questions to the Red Hat support team regarding Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, as their modules are professional and complete.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Both Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Chef have similar capabilities but differ in architecture; one is agentless while the other is agent-full.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform on the AWS cloud is very straightforward; I take one server, install Ansible, set up the inventory, and use it.
What was our ROI?
By using the enterprise version of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, we receive support that aids in overcoming challenges, a measurable benefit in terms of ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
For enterprise users of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, there are fees, but it is free and open-source for testing or small labs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have worked with Chef as a configuration management tool for one project, and I have used Chef and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform together in the same project.
What other advice do I have?
I have worked on the AWS cloud with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was hosted on AWS.
I prefer Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because it is easy to implement, and the extensive supporting documentation is very helpful.
I suggest everyone consider Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because it is agentless, easy to implement, and has sufficient supporting documentation available.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Infrastructure automation thrives but advanced dashboard features need improvement
What is our primary use case?
They are using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for infrastructure automation and cloud automation. The platform is used for CI/CD automation, deployment, and automation. The main use is infrastructure automation.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is easy to integrate. The platform is simple to use.
What needs improvement?
The dashboarding capabilities should be improved by bringing CMP (Cloud Management Platform) into Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Event-Driven Ansible is very important in the platform. Both Event-Driven Ansible and cloud management platform features are crucial improvements needed.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform since 2018, which is more than seven to eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is excellent, deserving a 10 out of 10 rating.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is not adequate. The Ansible sales and technical support services need significant improvement.
How would you rate customer service and support?
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comes with a high price point. Even though we use the platform, we need additional dashboarding tools because the complete infrastructure as code dashboard capability is missing.
Red Hat introduced a new product called Red Hat Developer Hub for platform engineering. While Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very good for automation, deserving an 8 out of 10 rating, the cost of combining Red Hat Developer Hub and Ansible is extremely high, which presents a significant challenge with the Red Hat product.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
In AWS, customers are increasingly using Terraform rather than Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. This is particularly true for cloud-based operations on AWS.
The choice between solutions depends on the situation. Developers tend to be more inclined towards Terraform, while infrastructure teams prefer Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
What other advice do I have?
We are still actively working with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Customers typically purchase directly from Red Hat for on-premise deployments, while those on public cloud buy from the marketplace.
We are recommending the solution to users as a Red Hat partner.
This review rates Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform a 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AAP is cool.
What do you like best about the product?
What I like best about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is its ability to simplify complex IT tasks through consistent, agentless automation across hybrid environments. It provides a user-friendly yet powerful framework that allows teams to automate provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, and more with minimal overhead. The platform’s integration with Red Hat’s enterprise ecosystem, coupled with features like role-based access control, visual dashboards, and certified content collections, makes it an ideal solution for scaling automation securely and efficiently across large organizations.
What do you dislike about the product?
It’s hard to hire employees with existing AAP knowledge
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Image deployment
Currently adapting ansible into our environment
What do you like best about the product?
Ansible uses a single user interface to access the controller, hub, lightspeed and galaxy
What do you dislike about the product?
The environment itself is large, complicated and daunting.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are hoping that we will be able to use playbooks to allow non-admin users the ability to execute elevated tasks without granting them admin access to a server. Almost like a graphical sudo.
ease of doing business for infra as code
What do you like best about the product?
Ansible playbook collection , event driven ansible offerings
What do you dislike about the product?
limited to certain specific choice of partner integration
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
infra configuration management and event driven resolution
I love the parallelism with Ansible Automation Platform
What do you like best about the product?
User Interface. I think that platform can be used for less experienced user to improve automation experience and usability of the code.
What do you dislike about the product?
Not supporting the same type credentials. I would love to use two machine type credentials within the same template.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Able to push changes to 250+ sites simultaneously. Integrating self-service, where customer can get what they need without involvement from the Network Engineer.
