We performed a comparison between AWS CloudFormation and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 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."Autopilot is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune."
"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."
"The stability is good."
"The ability to send configurations to our systems is valuable, particularly as we don't have a regular Windows AD server. Our current environment doesn't have a Windows AD, which limits our ability to push GPOs. However, this is where the solution can step in and help us push policies."
"I can reach devices or computers over the internet. I don't need to worry about the network connectivity between the offices. I can manage any device. That is the most important part."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is having all our devices compliant with our policies."
"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."
"A great solution for anyone wanting a modern endpoint device management solution."
"AWS Cloud automation reduces the time needed to create AWS resources."
"Scripting does what we need to reinstall something from scratch."
"The most valuable feature of AWS CloudFormation is the simple tracking of infrastructure."
"CloudFormation gives us control of AWS and any Cloud infrastructure. It creates the whole stack for Cloud services technologies so it's easy to manage the whole system."
"It is easy to work from the console and deploy new database services."
"AWS CloudFormation has automated the resource-building process, thereby removing the scope of human errors. We can tag the resources which help the billing process."
"The reusability of the solution is valuable."
"What I like best about AWS CloudFormation is that it is a quick and simple way to deploy various applications, like WordPress."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 Ansible is repeatability because when you're working at the DoD, you want things to be cookie-cutter and replicable."
"Being a game-changer in configuration management software is what has made Ansible so popular and widespread. Much of IT is based on SSH direct connectivity with a need for running infrastructure in an agentless way, and that has been a big plus. SSH has become a great security standard for managing servers. The whole thing has really become an out-of-the-box solution for managing a Unix estate."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is quite stable. If you set it up correctly with the right configurations and there are no hiccups during installation and deployment, it will be stable. I'd give stability a rating of eight out of ten."
"I like the agentless feature. This means we don't install any agent in worker nodes."
"It doesn't economize when you scale up. We have over 14,000 employees, and we have between 7,500 and 8,000 city-owned or personal devices being used to conduct city business. Its price can be improved. It is not a cheap solution."
"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."
"Sometimes, customers compare it with AirWatch, but the concept of Intune is different from other solutions. It's an application management app. It gets a bit difficult to explain it to customers, but it's not a product limitation. It takes a presale document or presentation to explain it to customers."
"It would be better if they can reduce the cost of the license."
"We haven't really gone through all the features of Intune. We are just discovering them. Every day, we see a new feature that we want to apply, but what will be great for Intune is to be able to deploy apps in a simple fashion. We should be able to easily install various apps on the Windows platform, iOS, and Android. Currently, we have to write some scripts. It's not as straightforward as we would like it to be. It should be simplified so that we can do it just with three clicks—next, next, finish—without needing to write a script."
"The reporting is subpar. That's the only issue we have with Intune. We use another solution for that purpose."
"Once it's configured it is unobtrusive, but it does take some hands-on to configure and deploy it properly."
"They could also make it easier to use because there are some other products that may be easier to use in terms of the look and feel of the dashboard."
"They could improve the product's capability to handle circular dependencies more effectively."
"The solution must enable more hands-on designing of the templates."
"As soon as they manage to parametrize the whole thing and to implement parameters at all levels, it will become automatically a lot more flexible."
"For a beginner, it's kind of difficult to set up. So, the user does need some knowledge in order to do it."
"Provisioning a large environment or a large number of services takes a bit more time than with Terraform."
"It would help all users if AWS improved the auto-generation of the CloudFormation file."
"There is less support for on-premise environments."
"The speed of the replication process could improve. It can take some time to replicate that could use a speed increase."
"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."
"Improvements should be made in terms of execution speed, which is, I believe, the most lacking feature. Aside from that, re-triggering a failed task is another useful feature."
"It would be good to make the solution more user-friendly,"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It needs better documentation."
"The user interface on the Ansible Tower product could be better, but it is functional."
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AWS CloudFormation is ranked 8th in Configuration Management with 28 reviews while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 1st in Configuration Management with 59 reviews. AWS CloudFormation is rated 8.4, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of AWS CloudFormation writes "Pretty easy setup with great automations for provisioning that save time and money". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform writes "Its agentless, making the deployment fast and easy". AWS CloudFormation is most compared with AWS Systems Manager, Spring Cloud, Red Hat Satellite, Microsoft Configuration Manager and Chef, whereas 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. See our AWS CloudFormation vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report.
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