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Ansible

Score9 out of 10

568 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Ansible?

The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (acquired by Red Hat in 2015) is a foundation for building and operating automation across an organization. The platform includes tools needed to implement enterprise-wide automation, and can automate resource provisioning, and IT environments and configuration of systems and devices. It can be used in a CI/CD process to provision the target environment and to then deploy the application on it.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Ansible has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 568 ratings of Ansible's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Infrastructure Automation

    Automate the setup of systems to achieve their desired state using configuration files.

    Category average: 8.8

  • Parallel Execution

    Allows for the simultaneous execution of configuration changes across multiple nodes or components.

    Category average: 8.5

  • Node Management

    Allows for the administration and oversight of individual devices or systems within a network.

    Category average: 8.3

Areas for Improvement

  • Automated Provisioning

    Automatically and systematically deploy, configure, and manage IT infrastructure and resources.

    Category average: 8.2

  • Reporting & Logging

    Generate reports and logs to track changes made to configurations, aiding in troubleshooting and auditing.

    Category average: 7.3

  • Version Control

    Track changes made to configurations over time. Allowing for rollback to previous configurations if needed.

    Category average: 7.3

Reviews

What users are saying about Ansible.
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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Infrastructure are a Match

Incentivized
Rob Weiss
Expert Infrastructure Engineer in Information Technology at Discover Financial Services (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have used Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform since 2017 for network infrastructure and network security automation. I have built solutions for several use cases including network compliance and self healing, F5 VIP building self-service, Firewall Policy automation, and several smaller use cases. We have many complex automation workflows that integrate with other platforms like Jenkins, GitHub, ServiceNow, and plenty of others.

Pros

  • Standardize controls and visibility for automation.
  • Provide RBAC and Vault for improved automation security and support.
  • Job Scheduling is much more effective than Cron or other home-grown solutions.
  • The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform API is one of the best features as it makes automation accessible from any other platform.

Cons

  • Testing Framework to perform CICD-like functionality for Ansible Playbooks, Workflows, and Collections.
  • Built-in development tools allowing testing playbook runs within a VENV or EE on the CLI directly or within an IDE. The challenge being that Ansible is not always available for direct installation on a user laptop for security reasons.
  • Could use improvement on standards for modules to provide better feedback from the underlying language (Python) for easier troubleshooting and support.

Return on Investment

  • A 45min manual process to build VIPs with a SLA of 1 week can now be completed as self-service within 10 minutes in production.
  • Firewall Policy ranges in review and implementation time depending on complexity of requests. Our policy automation is able to provide detailed and accurate decisioning information that allows the operations team to approve requests and have them automatically implemented within minutes. Not only does this free up Ops for more important efforts, but it opens access many times quicker which allows much faster time to market.

Usability

Exploring the Ease of Use and Automation Capabilities of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

Incentivized
Mahmoud Panda
DevOps Engineer in Information Technology at MOBILE HEALTH (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Red Hat Ansible Automation to automate our critical IT routine tasks, such as configuration management, patch deployment, server configuration, and software installation (e.g., Datadog, Python, and AWS CLI) across our multi-server infrastructure. Previously, these tasks took days or weeks to complete manually, but now run automatically, freeing us to focus on higher-value workflows. For example, when we need to patch many of our servers, this tool automatically deploys updates across all our systems instead of us doing it manually, which not only reduces human error but also keeps everything consistent, eliminating having different configurations which can cause issues later. Also it automate day to day health checks by scanning servers on schedule and generating reports that help us to know which systems are secure and which need addressing. Because it works across all our environments, it allows us to manage everything centrally without switching multiple platforms.

Pros

  • Automation purposes which eliminates human error.
  • Managing all configuration consistency between all servers.
  • Managing application deployment.
  • Automating security compliance tasks and network.
  • Patch management.
  • Routine health checks.
  • Report generation.

Cons

  • Doesn't offer ease integration with secret vault like CyberArk.
  • The technical support services need significant improvement, as users have had a poor experience.
  • Also needs improvement by creating modules for upcoming AI and ML technologies, as this capability is missing.

Return on Investment

  • First, it keeps our entire server infrastructure aligned with our standards and reduces the time and effort needed to maintain our systems.
  • Automate routine IT tasks to save time, reduce errors, and ensure every server is configured and updated consistently.
  • Tasks that used to take our teams weeks to complete manually now run automatically and reliably, with full visibility, making our infrastructure management more effective and our compliance tracking much easier.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Intune

Other Software Used

Jira Service Management, Datadog, Microsoft Azure

Requires up-front work but delivers in spades

Incentivized
Daniel Beckman
Linux Systems Engineer in Information Technology at Library of Congress (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Ansible Automation Platform to perform various maintenance operations on our RHEL servers. A major use case is the deployment of new servers (on-premise VMs) and applying standard configuration.

Pros

  • Deploying a new VM from scratch
  • Applying a standard software stack
  • Analyze current environment

Cons

  • If a machine is not already in an inventory, a template (playbook, role) cannot be applied. There is no easy way to give it an ad-hoc list of hosts at run-time.
  • It does not remove the need to create YAML files. We could have wider adoption (e.g. among Windows server admins) by having a GUI for creating basic workflows.
  • Getting a profile (job) to run right can take a lot of trial and error. Some 'static analysis' tools built into the web interface would be helpful.
  • We sometimes run into dependency errors on the target hosts related to their Python environment.

Return on Investment

  • New server deployments that once took a week or more now take under an hour.
  • RHEL server configuration is far more consistent.
  • Responding to security advisories is no longer a source of panic; it's routine.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Open Source Puppet

Other Software Used

Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat Lightspeed, Apache Solr

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is Cool

Incentivized
Courtney Smith
Information Systems Architect in Information Technology at GTRI (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has been used for provisioning and patching our client and server systems

Pros

  • It allows integration with multiple enterprise applications
  • It supports multiple OS
  • Playbook development can support both simple and complex tasks

Cons

  • The inventory feature should be able to support adding multiple systems outside Active Directory and/or Satellite
  • There should be an option for exporting templates from Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to core-Ansible and vice-versa

Return on Investment

  • It has simplified and reduced the deployment of our client systems
  • It has allowed us to reduce errors that error in manual deployments
  • Has helped us define baseline and fine-tun our configuration management of both deployment and patching

Usability

Alternatives Considered

PDQ Deploy & Inventory and Red Hat Satellite

Other Software Used

PDQ Deploy & Inventory, Red Hat Satellite

Great Product.

Incentivized
Duane Nieminen
Site Rel Eng in Information Technology at Frontline Education (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use the Ansible automation platform for all new system deployments. It provides standardized, reusable code.

Pros

  • Installations
  • Standards
  • Reusable
  • Baseline templates.
  • Code deployments

Cons

  • I think app could be improved by having dynamic surveys.
  • Easier EE deployments that are built into the platform. allows you to add new stuff more easily.

Return on Investment

  • I think, overall, it takes much less time to deploy once the roles are built. Building a new app or playbook is pretty quick when you can just reuse existing roles.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Chef Enterprise Automation Stack and IBM Terraform

Other Software Used

IBM Terraform, Chef Enterprise Automation Stack, Microsoft Visual Studio Code

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