Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. vRealize Configuration Manager (discontinued)

I'm going to say it is best suited for configuration management. Like I said, patching even with security, things of that nature. Probably less suited is hardware management, but Red Hat IBM/IBM has Terraform for that. So it's a trade off.

Incentivized

VMware vCenter Configuration Manager comes in very handy for engineers while providing the RCA of an issue or trying to do the troubleshooting, It allows to review the logs all in one place. Its change management feature allows pushing and reviewing the changes on several systems without the need of logging into individual systems. VMware vCenter Configuration Manager has provided a convenient way for the Patching and compliance of systems.

Incentivized

• 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

• Active monitoring of Syslog and notifications based upon the matching conditions.
• Change management- Changes can be pushed to several system from one place. It also keeps the record of what changes and who made the change even if the changes has not been made through VMware vCenter Configuration Manager.
• Robust reporting feature- Enhanced filters features and report generation in excel format presents the data in readable and to the point.
• Integration with ticketing tool further ensures that changes are approved before implementation.

Incentivized

• Ability to tell when a task has already been done
• yaml configuration can be annoying at times, perhaps a built in lint so yq isn't needed
• the become feature should be able to be set to true globally without using args

Incentivized

• It a little cumbersome to get all features up and running.
• Takes a bit of knowledge to get to all configured and thievery setup.
• It would be great if it had a monitoring tool internally, a tool like Nagios for example.

Incentivized

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

Overall it's good but the new architecture can be complex. Improvements can be made in the Config as Code capabilities for managing Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Sometimes it can be difficult for those unfamiliar to understand the relationship between Projects/Credentials/Job Templates, etc.

Incentivized

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

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

I spoke on this topic today!

Incentivized

As I said earlier, Red Hat Ansible remains a top choice because it is a perfect combination of multiple capabilities. Terraform is good in IAC but not in config automation. Puppet is well-suited for developers, but not for system administrators and infrastructure integrators. OpenShift and Kubernetes are generic automators only.

Incentivized

Improve operational effectiveness by continuously auditing configurations of the VMware infrastructure and Windows, Linux and UNIX operating systems. Accelerate the adoption of virtualization and cloud computing for business-critical applications by addressing security and compliance concerns.

Incentivized

• We are still early in our implementation and don't have much yet - but I can say that it has already improved the time it takes to deploy a new virtual server for us, as well as making them more consistent.
• In working through what jobs are required, it has really improved the communication between our different teams

Incentivized

• Really good ROI!!! Every penny paid with a smile on my face!!!
• Ease of use, simplified GUI, evenhanded features, strong support behind it, compatibility with other products.
• Cuts time for configuration drastically.

Incentivized