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."Easy to use."
"Being able to manage the devices remotely is most valuable. We can push security requirements through Microsoft Intune."
"Intune's unified endpoint management platform is invaluable."
"A valuable feature is user enrollment, where users can enroll their devices in their organizations themselves."
"Stable solution at a good price."
"There are so many features, but Windows Autopilot is one of the features that are very valuable for most customers."
"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."
"The key benefit of Intune is its integration with the Microsoft ecosystem."
"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."
"Ansible Tower provides a GUI, which is an enhancement, and a well-liked feature by operation teams."
"It was easy to read and learn. It is a YAML-based syntax, which makes it easily understand and pick up."
"Since it is in YAML, if I have to explain it to somebody else, they can easily understand it."
"There are new modules available, which help to simplify the workflow. That is what we like about it."
"When you have an enterprise-level number of network devices, the ability to quickly push out security updates to thousands of devices is the biggest thing"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We push all our configurations to the servers with ease and the logs capture almost all the transactions needed for an internal audit."
"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."
"Its main functionality is highly beneficial as it centralizes the management of configuration items across the network."
"The scanning features have proven to be highly valuable, particularly due to the comprehensive information they provide."
"It is pretty straightforward to set up."
"The solution's view is very nice, and they have a great customized dashboard."
"SolarWinds NCM provides updates on the status of your network infrastructure. If any issues arise, such as a link failure or a device going offline, you will receive notifications and alerts. Additionally, if someone unplugs a cable, SolarWinds NCM will detect it. It also features a Topology Mapper that displays the connectivity of your network devices, giving you a visual representation of the network's structure. With SolarWinds NCM, you have a clear understanding of what's happening within your network and can generate comprehensive reports."
"The mobile and tablet-based versions need improvement because they are not completely user-friendly, compared to the web version. Also, data synchronization with our existing asset manager, the synchronization between multiple assets and multiple devices, takes a lot of time due to the security scanning. It should be reduced."
"The initial setup is a little bit complex."
"The biggest problem we ever have is when something goes out of date after 30 days when nobody has logged into it. We do have a problem trying to get those back online. We've been working with Microsoft to resolve that problem, but that's been the only issue that we've had in the last few years."
"The add-ons must be integrated into the solution."
"Intune does not provide real-time visibility."
"Deploying an app can be a complex process due to dependencies."
"What would make this product better is adding more security policies and features in the next upgrade."
"The configuration could be better by consolidating options and making it simpler."
"They should think of this product as an end-to-end solution and begin to develop it that way."
"The support could be better."
"The solution is slightly expensive, and its pricing could be improved."
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""
"The solution requires some Linux knowledge."
"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."
"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."
"We are very satisfied with what we have. From a management point of view, whatever makes it easier for my team to help customers write their own playbooks would be something very beneficial. Everything is going as a service. Creating playbooks can become much more consumer-oriented so that customers do not need to contact us to write their own playbooks."
"Releasing a product compatible with operating systems other than Windows would be advantageous."
"The third-party plugins available in the solution could improve. I have received some issues with the templates."
"The network logs could be improved. When the error logs come across with those false positive alarms in the error logs."
"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."
"We want to be able to store it in a data warehouse format and integrate it with Google single sign-on."
"I'd like to see additional features like support for devices that don't use CLI for configuration backups, expanded inventory support for other vendors beyond Cisco, and compatibility with newer SD WAN devices. These enhancements would further improve the product's versatility and utility for users. we hope for future enhancements, especially in supporting security devices that lack CLI backup options."
"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."
"Our experience has shown that most of the problems we've had with SolarWinds NCM are related to software issues."
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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 62 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 "Its agentless, making the deployment fast and easy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager writes "Streamlines network configuration and compliance processes through its centralized dashboard, although its compatibility with multi-vendor devices may present limitations". 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 DataMiner. 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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