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.
"I would say the biggest benefit is the single-pane view. There's no jumping around multiple UI's to do your overall management."
"The biggest benefits of Intune are the ability to push changes and the added security. When we moved forward with Defender, we onboarded all those machines automatically. That helps dramatically. For a while, we were left with machines that weren't protected. We could see where people had done things they shouldn't have done, and Defender saved our skins a few times. It didn't happen a lot, but it happened enough that it made us glad we made that decision."
"The stability is good."
"It has helped with compliance. It has helped to ensure that devices comply with the organization's policy. If they are not compliant and secure, they cannot access the resources."
"The many policies available in Microsoft Intune for managing our devices are valuable."
"It is helpful for managing devices anytime and any place without requiring dependency on the local networks."
"Intune's most valuable features are the device, compliance, and configuration policies."
"We have a BYOD policy, and this solution helps us manage our devices."
"The automation is the most valuable feature."
"I like Ansible's ease of use. If you have Linux skills, you can create a reusable template for the dependencies and other configurations. I can store the templates in a repository and share them with my customers or other developers. It's a popular solution, so there is a large user base that can share templates."
"The reason I like Ansible is, first, the coding of it is very straightforward, it's very human-readable. I'm also on a contract, and I can clearly iterate and bring people up to speed very quickly on writing a Playbook compared with writing up a Puppet manifest or a Salt script."
"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."
"Installing it is a PIP command. So, it's pretty easy. It is a one liner."
"The solution can scale."
"It is all modular-based. If there is not a module for it today, someone will write it."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"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."
"SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"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."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."
"Integrating certain group policies can be challenging and may necessitate using on-premises systems to integrate them with Microsoft Intune."
"There are some issues using the solution with macOS and iOS, and it offers limited granular control with them. Intune works better on Windows and Android."
"Reporting in Microsoft solutions is pathetic. With Intune, I'm getting a free inventory tool, but I don't get a reporting tool. When I go to Intune, I can see one machine's entire data in terms of the hardware and the software running on it, but I cannot generate a report for all the machines in the organization. The reporting is the only feature holding back the functionality that is already there."
"It needs incorporation of Knox, ZeroTouch, etc."
"Its configuration is fairly complicated. You have to do quite a bit of discovery to be able to deploy it for a customer. You have to ask them a lot of questions. So, its initial deployment is the biggest challenge. They should make it easier to deploy with the use of Wizards or something else. During the deployment stage, there could be profiles for the customers who are particularly wanting to use certain feature sets of Intune."
"Lacking ability to leverage more iOS device management internally."
"The solution requires Mac support."
"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."
"The solution must be made easier to configure."
"It needs better documentation."
"We would like support for the post-integration of this product before cloud frameworks because right now their approach is to avoid using on-premises activities and move everything to the cloud."
"It should support more integration with different products."
"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."
"It is a little slow on the network side because every time you call a module, it's initiating an SSH or an API call to a network device, and it just slows things down."
"Some of the Cisco modules could be expanded, which would be great, along with not having to do so much coding in the background to make it work."
"It is difficult to set up."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
"Web UI."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."
More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →
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.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors and best Network Automation vendors.
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