We performed a comparison between Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and vCenter 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 that it's very good and very simple. I found that we just needed to have a proper subscription for an Intune tenant, and from the subscription, if we have the right role assigned, like the global admin role or the owner role, we can use Microsoft cloud resources. With the help of that, we can do many things like setting up Microsoft Intune in the cloud to create our virtual machines. All these can be done, and the steps are very simple. I really liked it. I like features like Windows Auto-Enrollment. I like it very much because whenever you supply it to the end-user, it will be ready to use immediately. The end-user only needs to provide the user credentials, and then they are good to go. I also really like Cloud PC, which was recently launched on Azure."
"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."
"It is a very helpful solution."
"Conditional access helps me control uncontrolled access."
"I like the fact that it's integrated with the rest of the Microsoft products, so customers can manage it from their Office 365 portal or Azure portal."
"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."
"Maturity makes it a stable product."
"The ability to wipe data from and reset devices is one of the most important and valuable features. If a device is reported stolen, we can freeze it or wipe the data from it, preventing data leakage."
"It is very easy to use, and there is less room for error."
"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."
"It is agentless. I don't have to think about which client system my unit has understanding in or not, because I can execute from my system. It will go and configure it, and any module that it is looking for will be shipped out."
"The automation is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is capable of integrating with many applications and devices in comparison to BigFix."
"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."
"The user interface is well-built and very easy to navigate around."
"It has an easy-to-use interface. It is REST API driven, and it integrates with Active Directory. It provides the ability to grant permissions to other users who would not necessarily have those permissions via the GUI so that they could run other people's jobs. For example, you could have the Oracle team grant permissions to the Linux team so that they can use each of those playbooks or each other's code. It is called shift-left."
"My primary use case is for migration"
"The solution is excellent at automating processes."
"The interface is very user-friendly and the solution is simple to use."
"The most valuable features that VMware's vCenter Configuration Manager have, when compared with other solutions, are their disaster recovery and business connectivity capabilities."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The online configuration, especially in the latest version, is very good."
"vCenter alone is enough for me because vCenter is a cluster environment and cluster solution for virtualization environments."
"I appreciate it because it's very easy to set up and configure new disks and servers."
"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."
"An issue we have run into with Microsoft Endpoint Manager is that we cannot patch third-party products like Adobe and Chrome with it."
"The reporting could be improved, as it's pretty poor compared to other products of this type."
"It needs incorporation of Knox, ZeroTouch, etc."
"Microsoft Intune has a latency response time issue. The latency has room for improvement."
"Intune's third-party patch management could be better. It should be easier for the average system admin to keep non-Microsoft applications updated."
"The reports that are generated aren't so great. They don't give a lot of meaning so far, but that could be down to user knowledge than the actual reporting side of things. I'm not a big user of it, but I was a bigger user of MaaS360, and we used to be able to run weekly and monthly reports. In the case of any deviations. we'd get a warning immediately. That's not so easy to do or to get in place for Intune. This could be just a user issue, but when I compare both, that's the only thing that's lacking for me."
"There is room for improvement in integration and security as well."
"The user interface on the Ansible Tower product could be better, but it is functional."
"It needs better documentation."
"Ansible is great, but there are not many modules. You can do about 80% to 90% of things by using commands, but more modules should be added. We cannot do some of the things in Ansible. In Red Hat, we have the YUM package manager, and there are certain options that we can pass through YUM. To install the Docker Community Edition, I'll write the yum install docker-ce command, but because the Docker Community Edition is not compatible with RHEL 8, I will have to use the nobest option, such as yum install docker-ce --nobest. The nobest option installs the most stable version that can be installed on a particular system. In Ansible, the nobest option is not there. So, it needs some improvements in terms of options. There should be more options, keywords, and modules."
"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."
"Ansible could use more public relations and marketing."
"Some of the modules in Ansible could be a bit more mature. There is still a little room for further development. Some performance aspects could be improved, perhaps in the form of parallelism within Ansible."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"The solution is slightly expensive, and its pricing could be improved."
"They could improve the hybrid-cloud environment and its management, not only for the local host but also including the connection between public and private cloud."
"There is room for improvement in operating and managing cluster environments and maintenance. And hardware environment visibility."
"It should be easier to use alternate storage."
"The ease of setup and installations could be improved."
"The snapshot functionality on the solution needs improvement. After renewing the snapshot, all of the production was stuck. Right now, its functionality is one of our main concerns."
"The product's price could be lesser."
"There are a lot of steps to do the configuration. We have to do it step by step and it is time-consuming. If it was easier it could be done quicker. There should be a preloaded configuration."
"If the solution could manage on-premises and cloud resources with the help of one tool, it would be an extra agent."
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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 58 reviews while vCenter Configuration Manager is ranked 9th in Configuration Management with 50 reviews. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6, while vCenter Configuration Manager is rated 8.6. 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 vCenter Configuration Manager writes "A solution with a range of functionalities and several pricing plans that suit your needs". 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 vCenter Configuration Manager is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, Red Hat Satellite and BigFix. See our Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. vCenter Configuration Manager report.
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