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Microsoft System Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Microsoft System Center

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft System Center Suite is a family of IT management software for network monitoring, updating and patching, endpoint protection with anti-malware, data protection and backup, ITIL- structured IT service management, remote administration and more. It is available in two editions: standard and datacenter. Datacenter provides unlimited virtualization for high density private clouds, while standard is for lightly or non-virtualized private cloud workloads.

    $1,323

    per month

    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
    Microsoft System CenterAnsible
    Editions & Modules
    Standard Edition
    $1323
    Datacenter Edition
    $3607
    Basic Tower
    5,000
    per year
    Enterprise Tower
    10,000
    per year
    Premium Tower
    14,000
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft System CenterAnsible
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Microsoft System CenterAnsible
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Red Hat
    Chose Ansible
    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform compliments Satellite
    Incentivized
    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
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    99%
    Would buy again
    181 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    148 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    179 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    112 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    140 Answers
    Features
    Microsoft System CenterAnsible
    Configuration Management
    Comparison of Configuration Management features of Microsoft System Center and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    Feature
    Microsoft System Center
    -
    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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    Score7 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    Microsoft System CenterAnsible
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (21 ratings)
    9.5
    (108 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft System CenterAnsible
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    For companies with more than 10 Windows devices and needing to standardize the OS, AV, access, share resources, and install software. SCCM is the way to go. This software is unnecessary if the business is all remote users and not in an office-type setting. There are cloud offerings or none to accomplish what a business needs.
    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
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Allows the grouping of devices by user.
    • Allows controlling updates being deployed to user devices.
    • Allows for the repurposing of machines by being able to load new or updated software on machines that already are in the system.
    • Allows us the ability to wipe a machine clean and restore it back to the configuration that was assigned the machine.
    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
    Microsoft
    • Needs web based storefront for requesting new software
    • Needs ability to manage the packaging work flow better
    • Sometimes is slow to download and there is no indication the entire catalog is being loaded, resulting in confused users not being able to find common software in the available list.
    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
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Microsoft
    It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
    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
    Microsoft
    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
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    If I had to dislike something about the system it would be how much it changes once you upgrade. This could be more of a problem of mine since I get used to one way and don't like it when it changes so much. I am enjoying the newest update, but it is a mess when you are actually going through the upgrades.
    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
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Red Hat
    I spoke on this topic today!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • We have been able to automate our patch management, firmware and other security concerns.
    • We have a standardized "image" ensuring our setup is consistent across the enterprise. This alone has saved us in time to support and time to understand how to use our desktops.
    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