Item: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Rating: 10
Author: Sylvain Ouellet

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Right now, we only do basic stuff with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. We are planning in the coming weeks to use it to update/upgrade our 200+ RHEL servers. Got a lab today that was very useful, and I will put in place. We have been trying to use APP/Tower for the past 4 years. The only issue is time, time to write/get playbooks.

Pros and Cons

Integration with other tools/providers
Easy to use/ user friendly

Maybe the host/group section
Nothing special to add

Return on Investment

We don't have any data yet on ROI
Still at early usage stage

Alternatives Considered

Open Source Puppet

Ease of use, once you understand how to configure the tool, everything is a piece of cake. It runs pretty fast also, can use GITLab to manage our playbooks. Security options is great, can setup granular security depending on each team using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. It is also easy to update the software, barely fails.

Key Insights

Do you think Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's feature set?

Yes

Did Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Red Hat Satellite, Nagios XI, CyberArk Privileged Access Management

Likelihood to Recommend

OS updates Remediation Event-driver use cases

Users and Roles

3 - People using AAP are mainly Unix administrators.
We also maintain our backup solution, which is Commvault, and the storage switches.
We will like to get other teams to use Ansible Automation Platform, such as the network admins, and Windows admins.
Including these two teams, it will represent about 15 admins.

Support Headcount Required

1 - I am the main automation administrator at our office.
The other 2 admins don't really know much about Ansible, so I'm doing everything.
I'm working hard to get these 2 admins to work with Ansible, so we can automate as much as possible.
The is getting vital for our orgnisation as we grow up, and getting more and more servers.

Business Processes Supported

OS patching
Event-Driven module
OS readiness

Innovative Uses

Event-driven tools, saves us a lot of time
Can use ServiceNow to open tickets

Future Planned Uses

Install erratas, security patch automatically once per month
Use more feature of Event-Driven server

Likelihood to Renew

8

Even is if it's a great tool, we are looking to renew our licence for our production servers only. The product is very expensive to use, so we might look for a cheaper solution for our non-production servers.
One of the solution we are looking, is AWX, free, and similar to AAP.
This is be perfect for our non-production servers.

Products Replaced

No

Key Differentiators

Scalability
Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use

The first use case that we did was to implement AAP with our monitoring tool, NagiosXI.
Depending on the alert, we got NagiosXI to call a projet using the API to clean up some folders.
After doing the online traning with Red Hat on Automation, I was able to install AAP, configure it, and start using it. It was pretty easy to put AAP in place and make it work.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

There is nothing to add so far.
Evaluation process is short, not too long and boring. Full to fill.

Nice survey!

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform