Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Primary Use Case

JA
Information Technology Engineer at London Stock Exchange PLC

Our company use the solution to automate IT for many government use cases. 

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DE
Linux Platform System Administrator at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

We use it for patching and configuration management.

We are a healthcare institution. We have less than 500 hosts. Ansible is used between the infrastructure and applications, and primarily has Red Hat as the OS.

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Alex Kabugo - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Wipro Limited

We use the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to configure our infrastructure. It is mainly used to configure the whole activity.

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Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Gogineni Venkatachowdary - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Operations Center Analyst at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

We deploy the production environment using the provisioning for Terraform. We provision the cluster we need. If we need three or four nodes, like provisioning for hardware, OS provisioning, and bootstrap provisioning, we will use Terraform. After Terraform, we have to do any configuration changes. To install some packages, I do the cluster configuration changes and use Ansible with Terraform. I will integrate and deploy products based on the Ansible configuration files by writing playbooks.

There are many configuration management tools currently in the market. If there is a huge cluster, we use Chef. For minimum nodes, we use Ansible.

I'm using the latest version. It's version 2.13.4. The solution is deployed on AWS cloud.

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AV
Principal Infrastructure Engineer at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees

I am using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform as a part of the scale-up of the nodes in OpenShift.

Mostly, we use the solution for upgrading-related stuff.

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SN
Lead Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Our company uses the solution for automations, patching, scheduling, and installations. 

We have 500 users throughout the company and two or three people per team who handle ongoing maintenance. 

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JS
Manager- Automation Engineering at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

I use the solution for all kinds of automation, network automation, compliance security, software installation, and software configuration. I started using the solution as a configuration management tool, and now I also use it for automation. I also use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform within the CMP platform Morpheus.

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VivekSaini - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant at Aon Corporation

We use the solution for Linux patching automation. Currently, we are using the solution for patching normal configuration-related work. However, we also plan to use it for the provisioning of the servers.

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Rizwan Chishti - PeerSpot reviewer
Techinal Solution Manager/ Hybrid Cloud Enterprise Architect at Kyndryl

We primarily use this solution for network configuration pushes. We use scripts from Ansible to push configurations to specific devices such as routers.

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TE
Senior Systems Administrator at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center

So far, the main thing we've been doing with it is using it to automate our monthly patching of servers. Since we have the whole inventory, we can patch this project's servers. We can use the exclude, exclude others, and, in one hour, do a patch that would take people one night to do.

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JL
Owner at Inventrics technologies

The primary use case is mostly automation. In technical terms, the solution uses a playbook. The playbooks contain code. If you have written all the code in the playbook, you just execute that code. You can automate depending on the environment.

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AANKITGUPTAA - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS

We have a lot of Red Hat servers in our data center environment, so we use this solution to manage the configuration, deploy and push configuration management. In addition, we use the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate deployment tasks.

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MC
DevOps Consultant at a government with 501-1,000 employees

We use it to configure operating systems, apply security, and for day-to-day management. Our use cases include collecting information from end nodes, rather than writing shell scripts or any other types of scripts, as was done historically, and rather than even logging in manually and collecting information from the nodes. These days, you write an Ansible playbook and it does things for you. And if you don't have a playbook, you can simply gather the facts from the nodes, and that's available out-of-the-box without writing anything. You simply utilize the Ansible modules.

Our Ansible deployment is for a hybrid environment. We have on-premises services that we use Ansible to configure as well as cloud instances.

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reviewer98623 - PeerSpot reviewer
Intern at a university with 1-10 employees

We use the solution for provisioning on different providers like VMware, and OpenStack because it was so easy to implement. This product is also helpful to create a job workflow including the approval steps.

It also includes DevOps tools for making an easy automation process. 

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AbhijitUpadhyaya - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior QA Engineer at Calsoft

We can use the solution for a group deployment if we have an infrastructure where we need to deploy software onto multiple machines at the same time. The tool should be on an Ansible server, and the server should be able to do SSH to the multiple hosts on which it wants to act.

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Md Jahiruzzaman - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at STBL

Our company uses the solution for clients with private or multi-cloud platforms. The solution automates the process of integrating multi-cloud applications. 

We have more than 1,000 users across our clients. 

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Surya Chapagain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

We can use it to configure or to change the configuration in a large number of servers. Also, if there are some issues in comprehension, for example, permission or ownership, we can fix that with the Ansible label. 

We can use other advanced features. Currently, for example, we are using BigFix for automation. We use Ansible since it doesn't need agents to install on every server. For BigFix, in contrast, you do need to have a BigFix agent for every server. Not having to do that with Ansible is a benefit for us.

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Hardy-Jonck - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at AgileWorks Information Systems

We use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in our company to implement a software-defined infrastructure, which involves defining the desired configuration of machines in terms of their components, setup, security, user roles, software deployment, and certificate deployment. With this platform, we are able to set up new environments and manage the lifecycle of instances across various stages, such as development, production, and pre-production. We also use it for routing up and back of new software.

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PT
Automation Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

We had a lot of manual labor. We had patching that was a manual process, and we had configuration drift. There were a lot of touch points. There were parts of the business where we knew that there could be a faster deployment and much quicker development and production. Ansible has increased our speed of deployment. We have a source of truth now. It has sped everything up, and it has saved a lot of people's time.

We've got on-prem and cloud deployment. We've got it in AWS, and we've got a proof of concept in Azure. We are looking at Azure SaaS, but at the moment, we don't know which way that would go.

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Venek Otevrel - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Cloud Architect at T1 Solution, s.r.o.

We use Ansible for infrastructure code. We also use CloudFormation. 

Ansible provides a central solution for automation for our customers.

We deploy this solution on AWS. We are a cloud company so that is why we don't have anything on-premises. We prefer a cloud approach, and we have almost everything in GCP or in AWS. The solution hasn't required us to change our existing infrastructure. We are using the server version 17. We use Ansible plus Ansible Tower, which is Ansible AWS.

The solution is user-friendly for our staff, although some activities are unique and are not being repeated several times, so we need to do those things manually.

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NS
Student at ARTH

Basically, Ansible is a configuration management tool. Mainly, I've been using Ansible for making changes and for deployments, such as of web servers. I also use it for servicing instances, mostly from AWS. I use AWS Cloud, and I configure the instances that I've launched.

Recently, I've also created an Ansible role. Basically, you can contribute to Red Hat in the form of an Ansible role. Everybody can share their code with just simple commands, such as Ansible Galaxy. With a few commands, we can share each other's infrastructure.

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MR
Senior Site Reliability Engineer

I use the product mostly to configure virtual machines.

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AG
Devops Engineer at Infosys Ltd

My use cases with Ansible include configuring network devices. That is what I used it for when I was first learning Ansible. I then automated PKI (public key infrastructure) compliance. That particular domain has different servers and I developed an automation solution, using Ansible, to automate the configuration of the PKI servers. And for the last eight or nine months, I have been working on automating cloud solutions, such as deploying services or upgrading or migrating to a specific version of a product.

I am working on a client network, and that client also has clients who are hiring our client for hosted services, such as websites or internal applications for their employees or for their end-users. All the database-related activities and operations are being handled by our client. What I am doing, in that context, has to do with patches. There are patch releases, or bundles, or package upgrades, but the developers of those packages can't go and directly upgrade the particular sites of every customer. So we have developed an automation solution for them, using Ansible, that can directly trigger these processes. They can point out that "this is the package," and our automation in the backend, using Ansible, takes care of it.

It's a tool to automate different domains and Ansible can reduce human efforts for two domains in particular. One is DevOps and the other is network automation.

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MI
Senior DevOps at RubiconMD

The primary use case is for configuration management. We use it for patching and updating. We also use it to send out new configs to all our servers.

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SR
Linux Administrator at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Our use case for it is as an automation tool. For the Linux side, we have very few automation tools. We do have Puppet Enterprise as a matter of fact, and we're looking at tools for automating our day-to-day operations, server builds, configuration management, etc.

We've got a demo version of Tower. We've been playing with it, using it for patching. One of our first goals is to automate patching.

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WarrenWong - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solutions Architect at Jihu GitLab Technology Limited

I'm a software architect at a DevOps platform called Jihu. We use Ansible to provision Kubernetes clusters. For example, if the cluster has dependencies, we provision for the specific package manager version and dependencies, so they can scale for the CI/CD line. Ansible helps us provision the Kubernetes cluster for single-cloud or hybrid-cloud scenarios.

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SD
Cognitive Business Operation at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

We primarily use the solution for automation purposes. We also use it for CI/CD plus DevOps. So these are the three main uses. We can use it for operational automation plus DevOps. We handle applications, pipelines, deployments, et cetera.

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MJ
Senior Director Network Security at Oracle Corporation

Our group at Oracle has been using the product for at least a year. I have only been using the product for four months.

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AB
Systems Administrator at Main Street softworks

We use it to manage all configurations and deployments.

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MK
Graduate Trainee at a construction company with 201-500 employees

We are using the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for storage and for confirmation management. We are using a template in VMware.

The solution can be deployed on the cloud or on-premise.

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KumarP - PeerSpot reviewer
Risk Analyst at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

We use Ansible for automation. It is integrated with Datavations. When we start Datavations, it calls the Ansible tower, which executes tasks like automated checks between the servers. We also use Ansible when we need to patch or upgrade our software.

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SJ
Senior Software Developer at HCL Technologies

We just started using Community with Ansible. We are trying to install agents to either a cloud or a local virtual machine. We are still in the starting phase as it has only been implemented for two months.

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SS
Senior Operations Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

We use it for any sort of automation. We started using Ansible about 18 months back. But then we realized, as we expanded Ansible, that we needed controls around it. We didn't want people just running around crazily running Playbooks. And that's where Tower came in. We bought licenses and it's kind of worked out, though we expect a lot more. I did have a meeting yesterday with the Product Manager for Tower. I did give some suggestions. It's worked out but we've got more expectations, and I hope they work out as well.

Some examples of the tasks we've automated include OS patching to begin with - everyone does that. We have been using Ansible and Tower for a lot of data collection, for auditing, collecting data from across different servers: network, OS, Windows, Linux, etc. That's one of our major automations. In addition, AWS and various clouds, if we have to spin something up.

We're not using it for compliance yet. I saw a demo about that yesterday and we'll probably explore that.

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WC
Ansible Lead at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

We use it mostly for remote execution.

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MM
Chief Cloud Architect

We use the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for infrastructure provisioning as well as application deployment on Kubernetes and virtual machines.

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EG
Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

You can literally automate everything. Whatever you want to do if you did it with shell scripts, you can do it in Ansible. There is also the ability to use Tower AWX, which allows you to store your variables in a hierarchy. 

If you're familiar with the Puppet product from more than six years ago, it allowed you to do inheritance on variables. Ansible made sure that they had that in their product. It's also not agent-driven. Therefore, you don't have the added extra bloat to your deployments. Just run your command, then get the code. You can deploy using packages on Ansible or you could deploy binary files by copying over.

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FN
CEO/Founder at Zen Networks

Server configuration management: This is Ansible's forte as it has multiple modules to interact with servers either to orchestrate or configure them. This can take multiple forms like pushing a script and executing it, sending commands to restart services...

Network configuration management: Ansible coupled with Jinja2 allows to push parametered configurations in a reliable way. Support for network gear isn't as common as server/development use cases. But, with some hacking, it can be managed

The tool can also be used for CI/CD software deployment, But, we didn't explore this topic with it that much, yet.

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SK
Solution Integrator at Kpco

We have reached the stage where we really need to automate all our tasks. That is why we are trying to use Ansible Tower.

We are trying to help our customers simplify their deployment process for deploying their private clouds, like Red Hat object tags. We start by the deploying the director Undercloud, Overcloud, etc.

We are trying to develop automation for White box switches: Integration, deployment, NOS installation, etc.

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MA
Works at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

We are using Ansible to automate the infra for various companies in the ASEAN region. The tasks include the creation of virtual machines, provisioning volumes/disks, database installation, user creation, and configuration. The environment includes Linux boxes and Nutanix for software-defined storage.

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CB
Solutions Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We use it both internally on our managed services offerings, which are new for us, and I've used it for the last two years in my customers' environments to help me with deployments, primarily on the networking side. We also place a big focus on source control and the software development lifecycle.

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CS
Senior Network Engineer at ePlus Technology

The primary use case is network automation. I have been trying to use it to roll out new offices and update things, like NTP server changes. I would like to roll NTP server changes out with a couple of clicks instead of having to go and manage several hundred devices.

I have been using the product since 2016.

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CM
System Engineer at a tech vendor

Our use case is to stitch together all the units, all the teams writing roles and Playbooks, and provide a central point for execution, and a way of managing what is executing against the infrastructure.

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DT
Software Engineer at Arista

Everyone gets super excited about when we show them the automation part of Ansible

  • How can you orchestrate things? 
  • How do you operationalize it? 
  • How do you take it to a group of people who don't have the experience writing playbooks themselves nor experience with command line? 

Tower allows control for more people to use it and have some safety nets behind it.

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Olajide Olusegun - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Team Lead at Atlas Security

We mostly use Ansible as a configuration management, application deployment, and VM provisioning tool.

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NA
Student at StarHub

We are still implementing it.

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LV
Co Founder at LIMESTONE NETWORKS INC

We use it to deploy our infrastructure.

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it_user870588 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at Huawei Technologies

1600 host environment, which is mainly used for software updates. As a production environment, it is used for security compliance.

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KR
Security Engineer at MindPoint Group, LLC

Our primary use case is automating security compliance tasks.

It has met our expectations. Automating security compliance tasks is what drew us towards the product initially. It definitely checked the boxes for what we needed to be able to implement.

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it_user1028010 - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation Engineer at Fidelity National Information Services, Inc.

It is used to support WAN network equipment.

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Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.