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."With on-premises Active Directory, the main challenge was that we had no control when a user was working from home. We didn't know what exactly a user was doing and whether the AV was up to date or not. Intune provides better control of their machines."
"Remote Wipe and Autopilot is one of the best features."
"The ability to (somewhat) manage full Windows 10 computers including EXE-based or MSI-based application deployments using Azure Active Directory as Identity."
"The solution is easy to use, simple to understand for those new to using it, and combined with the other Microsoft products it makes for an overall good package."
"It is user-friendly, and the performance is also good. It is a convenient product"
"The key benefit of Intune is its integration with the Microsoft ecosystem."
"Easy to use."
"It helps implement conditional access policies to restrict mobile users from accessing potentially dangerous emails."
"Having the Dashboard from an admin point of view, and seeing how all the projects and all the jobs lay out, is helpful."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don’t need an agent for it to work."
"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."
"It increases our company's efficiency, automating all the simple tasks which used to take hours of somebody's time."
"The automation manager is very good."
"RBAC is great around Organizations and I can use that backend as our lab. Ingesting stuff into the JSON logs, into any sort of logging collector; it works with Splunk and there are other collectors as well. It supports Sumo and that helps, I can go create reports in Sumo Logic. Workflows are an interesting feature. I can collect a lot of templates and create a workflow out of them."
"Ansible Galaxy is helpful for roles and Git Submodules: No dependency in managing playbooks. Also, fact caching in redis for host/role grp information speeds up execution. Finally, variable management is easy."
"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."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"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."
"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."
"SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"An area for improvement is the absence of seamless integration, particularly with external dashboards."
"Microsoft Intune could enhance its patch management for various devices, ensuring regular updates and tracking of device privileges."
"Enhancements for managing MacOS more comprehensively would be beneficial."
"Lacking ability to leverage more iOS device management internally."
"It would help if administrators could pinpoint the exact location of a stolen device to help law enforcement retrieve it and apprehend the suspect."
"It should be easier to define policies and comply with those policies."
"The synchronization could be improved."
"One area for improvement is app deployment. Another is the Windows update rollout. If you're rolling out an object to a device that's offline, Intune stops trying to reach this device after it sits idle for a bit. We are forced to find a workaround that could help manage that."
"It should support more integration with different products."
"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."
"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."
"For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on."
"If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this."
"The solution is slightly expensive, and its pricing could be improved."
"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."
"The tool should allow us to create infrastructure. It has everything when it comes to management, but it lacks the provisioning aspect."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"Web UI."
"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."
"It is difficult to set up."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 59 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 and Red Hat Satellite. See our Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. SaltStack report.
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