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 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."
"We have not experienced any bugs or glitches with this solution."
"The Asset Management and Auto Pilot are valuable features."
"The best feature is that we don't need to worry about downtime. We don't need to worry about the network connections of our office or the virtual private network. Everything is being done through the internet. Using Intune Autopilot, we can configure and deploy everything to the devices."
"One of the standout features of Intune is its seamless accessibility to work data, eliminating the need to be tied to an office or a desktop."
"The most valuable feature is probably mobile device management. Small businesses are coming under greater scrutiny and requirements for compliance as time goes on. We don't have to worry about a VPN because we can manage these devices, control company data, and lock users out. If needed, we can remotely wipe devices and deadman-switch them."
"The tool's most valuable feature is Autopilot."
"It works well if you have a Microsoft environment."
"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."
"The biggest thing I liked about Ansible is the check mode so that we can verify, after we've pushed, that the config there is actually what we intended."
"I like the fact that Ansible is agentless."
"The most valuable feature is that Ansible is agentless."
"The automation is the most valuable feature."
"We can manage all the configuration consistency between all our servers."
"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."
"Ansible provides great reliability when coupled with a versioning system (git). It helps providing predictability to the network by knowing exactly what's being pushed after validating it in production."
"The configuration compliance aspect of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager allows for easy comparison of configuration settings across branches, ensuring adherence to security guidelines and best practices. Automation capabilities have greatly impacted workflows, enabling tasks such as configuration backups, template deployment, and firmware upgrades to be automated, thereby streamlining processes and saving time. Compliance reporting features provide valuable insights into network compliance, offering pre-built security audit reports and customizable options to meet specific requirements."
"I use it for monitoring the entire network for the company. We oversee nodes down, we oversee devices heading up to crossing the threshold for CPU usage. We oversee power so power backups on the switches, we oversee if they're down or if they're failing. We oversee any node down or any router from any vendor."
"The features we find most valuable is the configuration backup automation, the configuration compliance, the security vulnerability detection and upgrading devices."
"It's perfect for network configuration management. It's easy to use."
"It is pretty straightforward to set up."
"Configuration refers to the specific settings and options that determine how a device or system behaves. It can include things, such as network settings, security settings, and other options that are specific to the device or system in question. One of the most valuable features of the solution was its ability to track and monitor changes to the configuration of devices on a network. This can be useful for troubleshooting and identifying potential issues. By keeping track of who made changes to the configuration and when it can be easier to determine the cause of any problems that may arise."
"The scanning features have proven to be highly valuable, particularly due to the comprehensive information they provide."
"We push all our configurations to the servers with ease and the logs capture almost all the transactions needed for an internal audit."
"From a new user's perspective, it may be a little overwhelming because there are quite a few things to look at in the console, however, once you are sort of acclimated and are familiar with your core functions, it's fairly simple and straightforward."
"There should be more support for macOS. Even though macOS is supported by Intune and Microsoft is working very hard to get more features into Intune to manage macOS, that's one thing they can give a lot more attention to."
"Microsoft Intune lags market leaders, such as Apperian, in its MAM capabilities."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The configuration and pricing can be improved."
"Deploying an app can be a complex process due to dependencies."
"Intune has some limitations when it comes to application updates for third-party applications. You can schedule an update, but when it's a package setup, you need to supercede and replace it each time."
"There is improvement needed in integrating with the installed Office solutions versions, such as Office 2019. The Office 365 integrates without a problem."
"It should support more integration with different products."
"It would be helpful to have templates for common configurations. It would make it much easier and faster rather than creating a whole script. The templates would decrease the learning curve as well."
"Ansible could use more public relations and marketing."
"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"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."
"The solution must be made easier to configure."
"Some of the Cisco modules could be expanded, which would be great, along with not having to do so much coding in the background to make it work."
"It would be great if they include a network service manager, network performance manager, or a privileged assessment in the next release."
"Its customer service response could be faster."
"On NCM, reporting could be a bit better. It's completely become just one report. When I try to create a custom report, the solution just commits old server data."
"The network flow is a problem for this solution."
"The third-party plugins available in the solution could improve. I have received some issues with the templates."
"Its look and feel can be improved. They can also put in more effort into building the THWACK community and use the information about various customer issues and requests to build the new releases."
"When we run the SolarWinds NCM jobs at the cellular line, it runs in the morning. They're just not finishing. We're getting false processing."
"The network logs could be improved. When the error logs come across with those false positive alarms in the error logs."
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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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