We performed a comparison between Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager 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 ability to block and erase remote devices is valuable to us, especially when those devices are lost."
"The product has eased the deployment of Microsoft apps to the devices. We can manage it properly. We can control it and push the updates. Another company helped us with the deployment. However, we can do it internally."
"The stability of Microsoft Intune is good."
"Intune enables us to manage our devices from anywhere."
"There has been a noticeable increase in productivity for both my organization and clients."
"It allows our clients to have the confidence to centrally manage policies for security. It helps them in securing the organization from a technology aspect."
"Intune's unified endpoint management platform is invaluable."
"Application deployment and keeping the devices secure no matter where they are, by having this cloud solution — that has been great."
"RBAC is great around Organizations and I can use that backend as our lab. Ingesting stuff into the JSON logs, into any sort of logging collector; it works with Splunk and there are other collectors as well. It supports Sumo and that helps, I can go create reports in Sumo Logic. Workflows are an interesting feature. I can collect a lot of templates and create a workflow out of them."
"This solution allows us to stitch a lot of different parts of the workflow together."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its configuration management, drift management, workflow templates with the visual UI, and graphical workflow representation."
"The solution can scale."
"There are no agents by default, so adding a new server is a matter of a couple lines of configuration (on a new server and the configuration master)."
"It is all modular-based. If there is not a module for it today, someone will write it."
"I like being able to control multiple systems and push out updates quickly with just a couple of clicks of a button and commands. I like the automation because it is a time saver."
"Ansible is agentless. So, we don't need to set up any agent into the computer we are interacting with. The only prerequisite is that the host with which we are going to interact must have the Python interpreter installed on it. We can connect to a host and do our configuration by using Ansible."
"I use it for monitoring the entire network for the company. We oversee nodes down, we oversee devices heading up to crossing the threshold for CPU usage. We oversee power so power backups on the switches, we oversee if they're down or if they're failing. We oversee any node down or any router from any vendor."
"The configuration compliance aspect of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager allows for easy comparison of configuration settings across branches, ensuring adherence to security guidelines and best practices. Automation capabilities have greatly impacted workflows, enabling tasks such as configuration backups, template deployment, and firmware upgrades to be automated, thereby streamlining processes and saving time. Compliance reporting features provide valuable insights into network compliance, offering pre-built security audit reports and customizable options to meet specific requirements."
"The feature that I really enjoy is the ability to script changes across all of your devices."
"It is a stable solution."
"What's nice with NCM is you can set up policies that you can then check against the configs to ensure that your device configs adhere to a baseline or standard that you've set in place."
"Compared to other vendors, like NetBrain, managing the solution is easy. They made it very user-friendly."
"It allows us to manage backups in big companies. It is also useful in managing the configuration changes."
"This solution has helped our organization by allowing us to store all the device configurations for the various network devices in NCM and making it easy for us to retrieve and look them over."
"I think there should be a better tracking of the cell phones used on the Intune."
"The technical support could be improved."
"Microsoft Intune's support for Mac devices is lacking and could be improved."
"The mobile and tablet-based versions need improvement because they are not completely user-friendly, compared to the web version. Also, data synchronization with our existing asset manager, the synchronization between multiple assets and multiple devices, takes a lot of time due to the security scanning. It should be reduced."
"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."
"The reporting could be improved, as it's pretty poor compared to other products of this type."
"It would be good if, in addition to the minimal patching and compliance, we could also use Intune for application deployment. For instance, if a device is not patched, Intune should have the ability to push not only a Microsoft patch but also other patches, such as a browser patch."
"It would be better if they can reduce the cost of the license."
"Accessibility. Ansible uses a CLI by default. Those accustomed to it can find their way and adopt the YAML files easily over time. But, some users are more comfortable using UIs..."
"It needs better documentation."
"The tool should allow us to create infrastructure. It has everything when it comes to management, but it lacks the provisioning aspect."
"The documentation for the installation step of deployment, OpenStack, etc., and these things have to be a bit more detailed."
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""
"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."
"Additional features could be added."
"Ansible could use more public relations and marketing."
"Its customer service response could be faster."
"The interface of solar winds could be improved."
"The Network Configuration Manager needs to improve the access control list compliance."
"Improvements are needed in the automatic network mapping function."
"Its look and feel can be improved. They can also put in more effort into building the THWACK community and use the information about various customer issues and requests to build the new releases."
"Releasing a product compatible with operating systems other than Windows would be advantageous."
"Our experience has shown that most of the problems we've had with SolarWinds NCM are related to software issues."
"The third-party plugins available in the solution could improve. I have received some issues with the templates."
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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 58 reviews while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is ranked 11th in Configuration Management with 22 reviews. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6, while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform writes "Capable of broad integrations with easy-to-operate infrastructure and user controls". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager writes "Network configuration is done well; great pricing". 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 SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, Cisco Prime, OpenText Network Node Manager i, VMware NSX and IBM Tivoli NetCool. See our Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager report.
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