We performed a comparison between Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and SaltStack based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The many policies available in Microsoft Intune for managing our devices are valuable."
"We already use a lot of Microsoft products in our company, and therefore, it made sense to also use this product."
"Its security is most valuable. It gives us a way to secure devices, not only those that are steady. We do have a few tablets and other devices, and it is a way for us to secure these devices and manage them. We know they're out there and what's their status. We can manage their life cycle and verify that they're updated properly."
"The tool's most valuable feature is Autopilot."
"With on-premises Active Directory, the main challenge was that we had no control when a user was working from home. We didn't know what exactly a user was doing and whether the AV was up to date or not. Intune provides better control of their machines."
"One of the biggest advantages of Microsoft Intune is that it brings the management of Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and even Linux under a single pane of glass."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Intune provides full endpoint visibility and IT control across device platforms. You can individualize it for your company with the Intune Company Portal app."
"It is all modular-based. If there is not a module for it today, someone will write it."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its configuration management, drift management, workflow templates with the visual UI, and graphical workflow representation."
"Managing our inventory is a big pain point. Right now, we have Satellite, but we can tie it in with Satellite, so we can actually manage things and automate the entire deployment stack, instead of trying to grab things from tickets, then generating Kickstart, and using that to get things in Satellite. That doesn't work well. We can do the whole deployment stack using the inventory share between Tower and Satellite."
"Ansible Tower provides a GUI, which is an enhancement, and a well-liked feature by operation teams."
"We can automate a few host configurations using the product."
"It has improved our organization through provisioning and security hardening. When we do get a new VM, we have been able to bring on a provisioned machine in less than a day. This morning alone, I provisioned two machines within an hour. I am talking about hardening, installing antivirus software on it, and creating user accounts because the Playbooks were predesigned. From the time we got the servers to the actual hand-off, it takes less than an hour. We are talking about having the servers actually authenticate Red Hat Satellites and run the yum updates. All of that can be done within an hour."
"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."
"The automation is the most valuable feature."
"SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"I want to build automation that is intelligent, part of the fabric of our environment, and is somewhat self-sustaining. I think SaltStack can help me do this."
"It is a highly stable solution."
"The backend of Microsoft Intune needs to be improved. We have seen a little bit of delay as compared to other MDM solutions. That needs to be improved. A little bit more granularity should also be added"
"There can be some added features, such as an improved dashboard. Any new feature that could be a benefit to our customers would be good."
"Deploying an app can be a complex process due to dependencies."
"Intune's third-party patch management could be better. It should be easier for the average system admin to keep non-Microsoft applications updated."
"They could also make it easier to use because there are some other products that may be easier to use in terms of the look and feel of the dashboard."
"In the past, I raised some tickets for the enhancement feature, which was missing in Intune."
"An area for improvement is the absence of seamless integration, particularly with external dashboards."
"We haven't really gone through all the features of Intune. We are just discovering them. Every day, we see a new feature that we want to apply, but what will be great for Intune is to be able to deploy apps in a simple fashion. We should be able to easily install various apps on the Windows platform, iOS, and Android. Currently, we have to write some scripts. It's not as straightforward as we would like it to be. It should be simplified so that we can do it just with three clicks—next, next, finish—without needing to write a script."
"For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on."
"Documentation could be improved. Many times, if I'm looking for something, I have to Google it in a lot of places, then figure out what the best approach will be. There are some best practices documents, but they don't give you the information."
"The job workflow needs to be worked on. It's not really clear to how you actually link things together. What they probably could do is provide an example workflow on how to stitch things together. I think that would be very helpful."
"Ansible has just been upgraded, and the only issue that we are seeing at the moment is that the user interface can be slow. We're currently investigating the refresh period with Red Hat when you click a job and run a job. It seems that the buffer no longer runs in real-time. We haven't discovered whether that's partially an issue with our environment, but Red Hat has come back and said that they're working on a couple of bugs in the background. We've upgraded to that version in the last six months, and that's the only issue that we've seen."
"What I'm trying to figure out, personally, is, when doing mass updates, how I can parallelize that a little bit better. It seems right now - and maybe, it's a shortcoming on my end - that I run through one set of servers, and then another set of servers, ad then another set of servers, but it seems like I could throw a lot of these checks out. Different types of servers, like web servers and DB servers, if I could parallelize that a little bit to make everything run a little bit more efficiently, that would help."
"Networking needs to be improved."
"It would be good to make the solution more user-friendly,"
"From Red Hat Insights point of view, the product is not on top as it is not responding as per the demand...Like on cloud platforms, you can see the main parts of Red Hat Insights, along with the inventory of all your apps. So, that is missing in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform."
"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"It is difficult to set up."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
"Web UI."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 58 reviews while SaltStack is ranked 14th in Configuration Management with 33 reviews. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6, while SaltStack is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform writes "Its agentless, making the deployment fast and easy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SaltStack writes "Orchestration tool that powers automation of processes with the click of a button". Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is most compared with Red Hat Satellite, Microsoft Configuration Manager, VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Azure DevOps and BMC TrueSight Server Automation, whereas SaltStack is most compared with VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Configuration Manager, HashiCorp Terraform, Red Hat Satellite and Automic Workload Automation. See our Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. SaltStack report.
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