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."I like the group policy management feature, which performs application monitoring and device enrollment."
"Maturity makes it a stable product."
"One of the most valuable aspects of Microsoft Intune is its seamless integration with Azure Active Directory, offering capabilities akin to Group Policy Objects."
"We already use a lot of Microsoft products in our company, and therefore, it made sense to also use this product."
"The many policies available in Microsoft Intune for managing our devices are valuable."
"It is a comprehensive security solution that not only controls access to enterprise resources but also tracks and prevents unauthorized access, ensuring the protection of sensitive data and preventing potential data loss scenarios."
"A valuable feature is user enrollment, where users can enroll their devices in their organizations themselves."
"The most valuable feature of Intune is the central dashboard for compliance and policy management."
"The user interface is well-built and very easy to navigate around."
"The most valuable feature is that Ansible is agentless."
"It does not require staff for deployment and maintenance. It just works."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don’t need an agent for it to work."
"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."
"On the network side, I already have a lot of our firewall related processes automated. If it's not automated all the way from the ticket system, our network team members, our tier-one guys in India, can just go into the Tower web interface and fill in a couple of survey questions."
"I like the inventory management. It's a very nice, simple, concise way to keep all that data together. And the API allows us to use it even for things that are not Ansible."
"The most valuable feature of Ansible is repeatability because when you're working at the DoD, you want things to be cookie-cutter and replicable."
"It is pretty straightforward to set up."
"The features we find most valuable is the configuration backup automation, the configuration compliance, the security vulnerability detection and upgrading devices."
"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."
"It allows us to manage backups in big companies. It is also useful in managing the configuration changes."
"The solution's view is very nice, and they have a great customized dashboard."
"Its main functionality is highly beneficial as it centralizes the management of configuration items across the network."
"Compared to other vendors, like NetBrain, managing the solution is easy. They made it very user-friendly."
"It's perfect for network configuration management. It's easy to use."
"In terms of what can be improved, I am looking for better enhancements regarding Apple management, not only on the mobile device, but also on the laptop."
"Lacking ability to leverage more iOS device management internally."
"A new Intune feature allows application packaging, but it incurs additional licensing costs for a significant number of applications."
"The configuration and pricing can be improved."
"In the next release, I would like a feature to be able to properly lock down the device. For example, if an attacker or somebody steals the phone, you can be sure that the pin cannot be broken."
"The reporting and cost have room for improvement."
"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 just doesn't handle software updates well at all by itself. You need to be a scripting wizard to make those happen properly, or you use third-party tools. The Windows feature updates are very difficult to implement. I would like to see a proprietary built-in remote control tool. I know that they have Team Viewer integrated, but it is not seamless. It would be nice if they had a seamless remote desktop capability directly from the Intune console."
"The area which I feel can be improved is the custom modules. For example, there are something like 106 official modules available in the Ansible library. A year ago, that number was somewhere around 58. While Ansible is improving day by day, this can be improved more. For instance, when you need to configure in the cloud, you need to write up a module for that."
"Performance has been an issue on larger environments, but it has gotten a lot better over the past two years."
"The documentation for the installation step of deployment, OpenStack, etc., and these things have to be a bit more detailed."
"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 could be easier to integrate Ansible with other solutions. No single tool can do everything. For example, we use Terraform for infrastructure and other solutions for configuration management and VMs."
"The scalability of the solution has some shortcomings."
"It can use some more credential types. I've found that when I go looking for a certain credential type, such as private keys, they're not really there."
"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."
"For each device, when you open the network performance monitor, it will give you all of the information about the device, but many of the natural configuration management features are not on that page."
"The interface of solar winds could be improved."
"It would be great if they include a network service manager, network performance manager, or a privileged assessment in the next release."
"The Network Configuration Manager needs to improve the access control list compliance."
"The only thing that requires some experience, and training doesn't fix, is how to set up your custom policy-based reports to check compliance."
"The third-party plugins available in the solution could improve. I have received some issues with the templates."
"The network flow is a problem for this solution."
"Its customer service response could be faster."
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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.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors and best Network Automation vendors.
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