Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs UrbanCode Deploy comparison

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3,838 views|2,607 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
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3,429 views|1,724 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and UrbanCode Deploy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, GitLab, Red Hat and others in Release Automation.
To learn more, read our detailed Release Automation Report (Updated: April 2024).
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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is very simple to use.""Installing it is a PIP command. So, it's pretty easy. It is a one liner.""We can manage all the configuration consistency between all our servers.""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.""One of the most valuable features is automation. We are doing automation infrastructure, which allows us to automate regular tasks. This solution provides us with a service catalog, like building new services and automating daily tasks.""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.""Managing our inventory is a big pain point. Right now, we have Satellite, but we can tie it in with Satellite, so we can actually manage things and automate the entire deployment stack, instead of trying to grab things from tickets, then generating Kickstart, and using that to get things in Satellite. That doesn't work well. We can do the whole deployment stack using the inventory share between Tower and Satellite.""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."

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"Stable solution that's good for automating the CI/CD pipeline: from development to production.""The most valuable feature is the snapshot functionality, which allows us to access previous versions of the artifacts.""It is very easy to make a software release. It used to take us at least a couple of hours to make a release, now we went to production with a new one last night. This new release took me five minutes.""The stability is good. I haven't experienced any issues.""The solution handles complex deployments very efficiently.""The most valuable functionality is the ability to define the deployment process, schedule the deployment and automatically execute the deployments to different environments."

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Cons
"The governance features could be improved.""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 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.""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.""One problem that I'm facing right now is the mismatch between the new version of Python and Ansible. Sometimes it's Python 2, and sometimes it's Python 3. When things get a bit dicey, I wish that Ansible would solve this issue by itself. I don't want to have to specify if it is Python 3 or version 2.""The documentation for the installation step of deployment, OpenStack, etc., and these things have to be a bit more detailed.""In Community, there's a lot of effort towards testing, standardizing, and testing for module development to role development, which is why Molecule is now becoming real. Same thing with Zuul, which we are starting to implement. Zulu tests out modules from third-party sources, like ourselves, and verifies that the modules work before they are committed to the code. Currently, Ansible can't do this with all the modules out there.""What I would like to see is a refined Dashboard to see, when I log in: Here are all my jobs, here are how many times they've executed; some kind graphical stitching-together of the workflows and jobs, and how they're connected. Also, those "failed hosts," what does that mean? We have a problem, a failed host can be anything. Is SSH the reason it failed? Is the job template why it failed? It doesn't really distinguish that."

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"I certainly would like to have a better way to pass information between deployment steps using UrbanCode Deploy because that's really difficult to do.""The technical support of the solution could definitely be improved as PMRs take long to resolve.""The scalability of this application needs improvement. Changes and variations in the application become bottlenecks as they need to be more seamless and comfortable.""I would like to have the agent up and running at all times, as opposed to only while it is in the DevOps pipeline.""The interface allows access in a number of ways but that can be confusing.""I would like to see more reporting for container architecture."

More UrbanCode Deploy Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Like many Red Hat products, they have a no-cost version of the web application (AWX, formerly Ansible Tower), but you are on your own to install and it is a little more complicated than just installing Ansible."
  • "The cost is high, but it still works well."
  • "We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
  • "Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
  • "Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
  • "You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
  • "The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
  • "We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
  • More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The licensing fees for this solution are based on the number of servers that are being deployed and the number of agents that you have."
  • "Considering COVID-19, the price is too high."
  • "The cost of the solution is high but it offers great ROI."
  • More UrbanCode Deploy Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
    Top Answer:The solution handles complex deployments very efficiently.
    Top Answer:The interface allows access in a number of ways but that can be confusing. For example, driving to your home from the office is easy when there are one or two routes. With twenty routes, there is some… more »
    Top Answer:Our company uses the solution for standard, blue-green, and complex deployments. We have 250 users throughout our company.
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 32 in Release Automation
    Views
    3,838
    Comparisons
    2,607
    Reviews
    26
    Average Words per Review
    502
    Rating
    8.7
    6th
    out of 32 in Release Automation
    Views
    3,429
    Comparisons
    1,724
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    380
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Ansible
    uDeploy
    Learn More
    Overview

    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful network automation solution that allows organizations to handle every aspect of their application launch process within a single product. It enables users to share their automations so that teams within an organization can collaborate on various projects with ease. Ansible Automation Platform is designed to be used by all employees involved in the network automation process.

    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform include:


    • Maximum benefit for reduced overhead. Ansible Automation Platform is an all-in-one solution that can enable users to do the jobs of multiple products with one. Users do not need to purchase multiple products to handle their network automation and application development needs. It is equipped with prefabricated content from more than one hundred companies that are partnered with it.


    • Scalable. Ansible Automation Platform is a highly scalable solution. It can easily be scaled up so that automations can be extended across the various devices that make up an organization’s network.


    • Flexibility. Ansible Automation Platform is highly flexible. It enables users to tackle any and all automation-related tasks.


    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Features


    • Automation analytics. Ansible Automation Platform comes equipped with an automation analytics feature. This feature enables organizations to measure the effects of their automations and plan how they are going to implement automations moving forward. It makes it easy for administrators to spot anomalies in their automations and resolve them before they can escalate and become major issues.


    • Integration suite. Ansible Automation Platform gives organizations access to a wide variety of integrations that enable them to connect to Ansible’s partners. Now users can augment their capabilities without needing to purchase additional solutions that will enable them to run features that are not normally a part of Ansible’s array of tools. The Ansible environment is built to handle the wide variety of integrations that their partners offer. In order to accomplish this it includes the APIs that users need in order to fully benefit from the integrations. 


    • Centralized interface. Ansible Automation Platform comes with a centralized GUI interface that enables users to manage all of their network automation and application creation activities from a single location. Businesses can guarantee that their operations are going to be handled efficiently and according to a single standard. The management process is greatly simplified. All of the tools that users need are located in one place.


    Reviews from Real Users

    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its automation manager and its comprehensive centralized GUI-based management interface.

    MD J., a solution architect at STBL, says, “The automation manager is very good and makes things easier for customers with multi-cloud platforms.”

    Aankit G., a Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS, writes, “We like the GUI-based interface for the tower. Before, we only had a command-line interface to run all the Ansible tasks. Now, the Ansible tower provides the complete GUI functionality to run, manage, and create the templates and the Ansible jobs. This includes the code and YAML file we can create. The GUI interface is the added advantage of this solution, including some integration with the different plugins.”

    IBM UrbanCode Deploy orchestrates and automates the deployment of applications, middleware configuration, and database changes into development, test, and production environments—local, dedicated or shared cloud environments—accelerating time to market and reducing cost by shrinking manual efforts from days to minutes with automation, while reducing risk by cutting deployment errors by up to 90 percent.

    Sample Customers
    HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
    As policy, IBM does not release customer names on non-IBM web sites.  However, public DevOps and UrbanCode Deploy case studies can be found here. IBM's UrbanCode Deploy customers span Small-Medium Businesses to Fortune 500 companies across all industries worldwide.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization25%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm33%
    Insurance Company24%
    Healthcare Company14%
    Retailer10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization59%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Insurance Company8%
    Computer Software Company4%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise68%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business6%
    Midsize Enterprise60%
    Large Enterprise34%
    Buyer's Guide
    Release Automation
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, GitLab, Red Hat and others in Release Automation. Updated: April 2024.
    768,246 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 3rd in Release Automation with 58 reviews while UrbanCode Deploy is ranked 6th in Release Automation with 27 reviews. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6, while UrbanCode Deploy is rated 7.8. 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 UrbanCode Deploy writes "It offers OOTB plugins for middleware". Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is most compared with Red Hat Satellite, Microsoft Configuration Manager, VMware Aria Automation and Microsoft Azure DevOps, whereas UrbanCode Deploy is most compared with GitLab, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Octopus Deploy, HCL Launch and BMC Release Lifecycle Management.

    See our list of best Release Automation vendors.

    We monitor all Release Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.