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HashiCorp Packer vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    HashiCorp Packer

    Score10 out of 10
    N/AHashiCorp Packer automates the creation of machine images, coming out of the box with support to build images for Amazon EC2, CloudStack, DigitalOcean, Docker, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, QEMU, VirtualBox, and VMware.N/A

    Ansible

    Score9.2 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

    Pricing
    HashiCorp PackerAnsible
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Basic Tower
    5,000
    per year
    Enterprise Tower
    10,000
    per year
    Premium Tower
    14,000
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HashiCorp PackerAnsible
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    HashiCorp PackerAnsible
    Considered Both Products
    HashiCorp
    Chose HashiCorp Packer
    There are lot of tools in market which does the job for Image creation but all of them are not complete Machine/Image as a code. All other alternatives can create Image partially.

    Main reason for selecting Packer are
    Incentivized
    Red Hat
    Chose Ansible
    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is more platform agnostic which allows users in multi-OS environment to maintain configuration and manage drift.
    Incentivized
    Chose Ansible
    For the most part pretty well. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform will always have room for improvement for a while since it really is a bit of a moving target and will always strive for new capabilities. RHEL of course has been around for some time and it does what it is …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    99%
    Would buy again
    181 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    148 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    179 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    112 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    140 Answers
    Features
    HashiCorp PackerAnsible
    Configuration Management
    Comparison of Configuration Management features of HashiCorp Packer and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    Feature
    HashiCorp Packer
    -
    Ratings
    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    8.6
    44 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Infrastructure Automation00 Ratings9.244 Ratings
    Automated Provisioning00 Ratings8.841 Ratings
    Parallel Execution00 Ratings8.840 Ratings
    Node Management00 Ratings8.432 Ratings
    Reporting & Logging00 Ratings7.841 Ratings
    Version Control00 Ratings8.738 Ratings
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    User Ratings
    HashiCorp PackerAnsible
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.5
    (108 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HashiCorp PackerAnsible
    Likelihood to Recommend
    HashiCorp
    We use packer to generate new machine images for multiple platforms on every change to our Configuration Management tools like Chef/Puppet/Ansible It's act single tool for Image building for Multi-provider like AWS/Azure/GCP Helps to achieve Dev/Prod Parity Packer itself doesn't have a state like Terraform. You can't do packer output AMI ID. If you have a scenario where you want to maintain the state for images it would be tough to manage via Packer.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    For automating the configuration of a multi-node, multi-domain (Storage, VM, Container) cluster, Ansible is still the best choice; however, it is not an easy task to achieve. Creating the infrastructure layer, i.e., creating network nodes, VMs, and K8s clusters, still can't be achieved via Ansible. Additionally, error handling remains complex to resolve.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    HashiCorp
    • Multi-provider portability
    • Greater testability
    • Super fast infrastructure deployment
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    HashiCorp
    • Manageability
    • Manageability
    • Manageability
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    • I can't think of any right now because I've heard about the Lightspeed and I'm really excited about that. Ansible has been really solid for us. We haven't had any issues. Maybe the upgrade process, but other than that, as coming from a user, it's awesome.
    • Give out Lightspeed for free.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    HashiCorp
    We are happy with the use of Packer in our organization. Apart from manageability, I don't find any other drawback with Packer.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    Even is if it's a great tool, we are looking to renew our licence for our production servers only. The product is very expensive to use, so we might look for a cheaper solution for our non-production servers. One of the solution we are looking, is AWX, free, and similar to AAP. This is be perfect for our non-production servers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    HashiCorp
    It's best for building Image with many features and benefits.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    It's overall pretty easy to use foe all the applications I've mentioned before: configuring hosts, installing packages through tools like apt, applying yaml, making changes across wide groups of hosts, etc. Its not a 10 because of the inconveinience of the yaml setup, and the time to write is not worth it for something applied one time to only a few hosts
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    HashiCorp
    No answers on this topic
    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
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    Support Rating
    HashiCorp
    I only once required support and it was very smooth.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
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    Implementation Rating
    HashiCorp
    I haven't found any issue in Implementation that itself describes how well this tool is built.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    I spoke on this topic today!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    HashiCorp
    There are lot of tools in market which does the job for Image creation but all of them are not complete Machine/Image as a code. All other alternatives can create Image partially. Main reason for selecting Packer are Packer is lightweight, portable, and command-line driven Packer helps keep development, staging, and production as similar as possible. Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image Multi-provider portability is the feature to die for
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Return on Investment
    HashiCorp
    • Super fast infrastructure deployment
    • Quick turnaround of infrastructure in multiple cloud using single tool.
    • Increase productivity by reducing time in infrastructure building.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    • POSITIVE: currently used by the IT department and some others, but we want others to use it.
    • NEGATIVE: We need less technical output for the non-technical. It should be controllable or a setting within playbooks. We also need more graphical responses (non-technical).
    • POSITIVE: Always being updated and expanded (CaC, EDA, Policy as Code, execution environments, AI, etc..)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots