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PDQ Deploy & Inventory vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    PDQ Deploy & Inventory

    Score9.6 out of 10
    N/APDQ.com headquartered in Salt Lake City offers PDQ Deploy, a software deployment tool used to keep Windows PCs up-to-date without bothering end users.

    $1,575

    per year per user

    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
    PDQ Deploy & InventoryAnsible
    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
    PDQ Deploy & InventoryAnsible
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPDQ was built by entrepreneurs & educators. Small businesses (<50 employees), nonprofits, and schools enjoy a 15% discount.—
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    PDQ Deploy & InventoryAnsible
    Configuration Management
    Comparison of Configuration Management features of PDQ Deploy & Inventory and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    Feature
    PDQ Deploy & Inventory
    -
    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
    PDQ Deploy & InventoryAnsible
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    9.5
    (108 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (5 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    PDQ Deploy & InventoryAnsible
    Likelihood to Recommend
    PDQ
    PDQ Inventory is great if you have a local network of computers on or off a domain. As long as you have a way to log into them with common credentials. Great for large organizations, particularly ones interconnected with VPNs. PDQ Inventory isn't so great for PCs that aren't connected to the same LAN the server is on. (i.e. non-vpn remote users) They used to have a remote agent you could install, but it was removed after numerous issues.
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    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.
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    Pros
    PDQ
    • Push out new software
    • Push out Updates to current software
    • Push out patches and updates that we don't have other ways to push out
    • Keep end-users updated with little involvement
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    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.
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    Cons
    PDQ
    • The facility to attempt re-deployment can be a bit easier to use, however, once you get used to it, it is OK.
    • The errors that it produces can be a bit cryptic, so could do with some sort of a verbose mode, when logging issues with packages being deployed.
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    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.
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    Likelihood to Renew
    PDQ
    PDQ is very useful and one of the tools that we use a lot.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Usability
    PDQ
    The interface is straight forward and guides you through the process there. PDQ keeps track of the when new updates are made available writes the scripts and all l you need to do is push the button. (Mr George Jetson) Now with the download done you just sit back worry free and watch the software install in 1% of the time it would take to take care of the PC manually.
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    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
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    Performance
    PDQ
    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.
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    Support Rating
    PDQ
    The built-in help menus and general ease of use render whatever systems support there might be almost irrelevant. There is stability in the system's simplicity; if you're in the position to use such a product, you're your own best friend. Simple web searches more often than not turn up the solution to any little niggles, such as what silent install switches specific applications require (a remarkably wide choice of options exist). System updates are timely and unobtrusive, installing in no time at all. Maybe I've just been lucky; if so, long may it continue!
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    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.
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    Implementation Rating
    PDQ
    No answers on this topic
    Red Hat
    I spoke on this topic today!
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    Alternatives Considered
    PDQ
    This software was referred to us by an IT professional. Previously, we were installing the software with the help of remote desktop applications but it was very time consuming; it was wasting the user's time since he could not use his computer. After testing PDQ Deploy, we just never looked back.
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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.
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    Return on Investment
    PDQ
    • Speed of deployment is very positive for new software setup, saving hours of testing and deployment locally
    • Made patching for large computer estate very efficient, another positive for staff not having to spend hours of patching individual machines
    • Works well for small team of IT's and again makes various repetitive tasks much easier
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    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..)
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    ScreenShots