We primarily use it for network automation and security or CVE resolution.
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Need way to import specific community modules potentially on the fly with a playbook
What do you like best about the product?
Helpful for the logging and management of the different acccess keys and a central way to run/share playbooks
What do you dislike about the product?
our old implementation of Ansible Tower (my team is a tenant) had the community modules. New environmetn does NOT and we do not have access to create our own custom execution environments.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
cloud infrastructure
- Mark review as helpful
Infrastructure Architect standardizing our environment with ansible
What do you like best about the product?
I like I can create configuration and based on hosts or groups apply to my ectire fleet of ververs.
What do you dislike about the product?
Invlite vault is a bit clunky. If not formatted exactly correct it does not read.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It is allowing us to standardize our server. Makes our administration easier.
Ansible
What do you like best about the product?
I think its a great platform. but you're missing out on companies at Wix's size would prefer to develop in house solution due to high pricing
What do you dislike about the product?
I use Ansible, not the automation platform because the pricing is ridiculesly high.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
the above topics
Saves thousands of hours and helps to resolve security issues within minutes
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
We save thousands of hours a year doing security updates and configuration updates. We save our administrator's time by pushing updates. It is a one-click solution, and all they have to do now is pull down whatever they need for their configs. It saves about 4,000 man hours a year.
If you imagine Tier 1, 2, and 3 administrators, I am sitting more at the Tier 3 level. We are able to push out more complicated configurations. We can do just an SSH push to thousands of devices. It saves the time of our administrators from having to go into the console of every device. They do not have to SSH into every device and manually type in those configs. We can resolve security issues within a matter of minutes rather than days.
You have the initial big push to get Ansible set up and running in the environment, but once it is there, any tweaks or changes involve just edits to the code base, and you are good to go. It is not at all intensive.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has not reduced the training required to learn how to automate things. We are starting from scratch, so there is always going to be a learning curve associated with it. The more you peel that onion, the more involved it gets, and the more you have to learn about it.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform helps connect teams, such as developers, operations, or security so that they can automate together. It is hard to get anything done if all of those players are not talking. Knowledge bases are not siloed anymore. Previously, we did not have a cross-talk or sharing of information. Now that we have the platform, we have to share knowledge back and forth where we are pushing an update and they are telling us what is broken. There is constant feedback. There is a good feedback loop.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has helped to reduce the time we spend on low-value or repetitive tasks. It is hard to quantify the time savings because of the mass scale at which we use it, but it would be within thousands of man hours a year.
My guess is that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has saved us costs, but I am not in a position to see those numbers.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
At this time, I do not have anything to improve. What we struggle with is the knowledge base, but that is more about us having to go and find it and learn the platform on our own rather than an actual Ansible issue.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for the last eight months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is pretty good. Usually, if we have any issues, they are user-induced. When Ansible goes down or there is an issue like that, it is usually something we have done at the backend rather than Ansible itself.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable. The way we use it is that we tie it in with another app to touch all of our devices and to deploy any configurations or whatever we need to push. Our code base sits on Git, and then we use another company for monitoring our devices. With one tower, or two for redundancy, we are able to push to more than 5,000 devices.
How are customer service and support?
It has been good so far. There have been a few cases for which we reached out to them to get some help. I have not interacted with them personally, but I have heard good things. I would rate their support an eight out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have not used any similar solution.
How was the initial setup?
I was not there when we set it up. In terms of the deployment model, we still have one that is in the VM, and we are also using the containerized version. It is still Ansible Tower.
What was our ROI?
It has saved us thousands of man hours.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was not there when we set it up. We have been using it for about four years. I am not sure about what happened before then.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform a nine out of ten.
it makes your life easier, expend more time in another projects
What do you like best about the product?
its so reliable so I can create templates for all the devices I needed and wanted, and save me time
What do you dislike about the product?
nothing at all, the documentation is great
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
change configuration on a network devices one by one is madness, so using ansible I can doit better faster and erro free
Greatly enjoy the ease of automation.
What do you like best about the product?
Ease of use, expanse of pre-existing modules for managment/automation.
What do you dislike about the product?
yaml spacing/syntax editing when wrting custom playbooks.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Ease of environment wide system configurations. Attacking security vulnerability remediation across environment.
Makes it easy to build playbooks and saves time and resources
What is our primary use case?
I am the section manager for the open system section in a county. We provide support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the IBM AIX platform, and, of course, Ansible Tower.
Ansible Tower was brought in to automate a lot of endpoint security software. We have an entire process where we bring up virtual machines on the x86 environment. Every time we brought up a Linux or Windows virtual machine, all the endpoint software needed to be installed after the fact by the necessary groups. That was taking a long time. If we have ten machines pop up today, going to all ten machines and installing five different endpoint security tools takes a while. Ansible helped in adding Ansible playbooks into the workflow. Now, when someone clicks and says that I want a Linux machine and provides all the information, then in the end, it spins up the machine automatically and uses Ansible Playbooks to install all the necessary pieces of software. It then gives a login and the necessary passwords for the customer to log in and start working. We now know that every time we deploy, all our endpoint security products are installed and ready to go.
How has it helped my organization?
The benefit is in terms of time-saving. There is more time for our team to worry about and take care of other engineering work than worrying about installing endpoints. Also, our Oracle database team is working on Ansible Playbooks to automate patching, which takes a long time to plan and do, especially in the production workloads. We are working very closely with that group.
We also work with the backup group to see how we can automate the day-to-day mundane processes. All these aspects bring us a lot of value. We are saving time, and we can also restructure and understand our necessity to have extra people on the team. We can cut down costs on that. We can reorganize ourselves to focus on much better technology, such as AI and things like that, instead of wasting time doing manual processes.
It has helped us achieve our mission. It helps to reduce the workforce and manage the time of our existing workforce. They can be more involved in new technologies such as AI. Understanding them takes time. They save a lot of time with automation.
We use other Red Hat products. We use OpenShift. When containers started taking off, which was about six to seven years ago, the government sector did not want to go into the cloud and use AWS containers. However, in our county, the customers were demanding that. They were saying that their applications are modernizing and we need to provide them with a container environment. That is when we decided to go for it. Because we were already Red Hat customers and we have been running Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 4.x, we decided to go for OpenShift. It was the same platform, and they were offering manageable containers. That is how we brought in the container platform. It is rock-solid. We had it on-prem. We have moved it to AWS, and it is great. The new thing is OpenShift Container Platform Plus which comes with a slew of additional tools. These tools help us provide the necessary application infrastructure for containers for customers.
We have Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OCP running in AWS.
It takes away a lot of work. For example, if you have five security products to install, you install the first one, test it, and make sure it works. You then install the second one, the third one, and the fourth one, and then something happens. Something breaks. All that is taken away because we have foolproof systems built into our playbooks. There is also a continuous workflow from the start until the end.
With Ansible Tower, the automation methodology is simple. There is ease of learning. It definitely reduces the training required to learn how to automate things for technical folks. It is much easier than writing bash scripts. This reduced training affects our operations or business. For example, if security folks come and say that they need to write a bash script that will go into their workflow to install, uninstall, and upgrade agents, that is a lot easier to do with Ansible Playbooks.
It helps to bring teams together. Black lines between the operations, security, and other teams are going away. Those lines are becoming more gray and light gray. There are DevOps and SecOps, and even finance is becoming FinOps. It definitely helps teams come together, and then we try our best to guide the teams, whether it is the Oracle team or security team, so that eventually they will learn to do their own playbooks. We can always be the guardrails.
It increases productivity, saves time, and even saves the cost of people working after hours trying to get these things going. It is all in the workflow.
It has definitely helped to reduce the time we spend on low-value or repetitive tasks. There is a huge difference. About 20% of my staff's time is saved. They do not have to worry about things. Once you set it, you can forget it unless there is a change or there is something different. For example, the security group comes and says that they have stopped using the Cisco product. They are using some other vendor's endpoint security. In such a case, all we have to do is change those variables, and we are done. Previously, we had to go back, use the Windows uninstall program and reinstall. This is much easier.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is that it is easy to build playbooks. The learning curve is not that steep. That is one thing. The other valuable feature is all the pieces of logs and things like that where you can go and find out if something went wrong. Those are the key features.
Also, we use the OpenShift Container Platform, so it blends in very well if you want to deploy containers or namespaces. Automatic DNS, creation of DNS, collation of namespaces, and other similar things can be automated with Ansible.
What needs improvement?
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. It would be great to have something that can help us do that with a few clicks like all these new languages that are there today. We used to use a lot of bash scripts to do automation, but you need to be a Unix administrator for years to even figure that out. What Ansible is providing is somewhat user-friendly, but I would extend that to be even more user-friendly for customers so that they do not have to contact a technical team to write their playbooks.
For how long have I used the solution?
We started using it about two years ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. I have not had any issues since we brought it up. I have a non-production environment and a production environment. Non-production is just for our guys to play around with. It is not as big as the production environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Adding resources and satisfying customer demands is easy. We have no problems with scaling out.
How are customer service and support?
Their support is fantastic. I would rate them a nine out of ten because the whole team was changed after IBM bought them. The new guys are getting used to it. Whenever I call them, they are very responsive. It was sad to see the team that we were used to for six or seven years being let go. I do not know why.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use a similar solution previously. We used bash scripts.
How was the initial setup?
The entire Ansible solution is on-prem. The team did not have any challenges deploying it. My team has been dabbling with Red Hat since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.x. It was just another Red Hat box for them. It was not a major issue for them to bring up the necessary infrastructure.
What about the implementation team?
It was all done in-house.
What was our ROI?
In terms of the reduction in costs, we started using it only two years ago. I have to recoup my infrastructure cost for setting up Ansible Tower. We are charging our customers. Previously, we had bash scripts. There was not a cost, but now, I have to recoup the cost of Ansible Tower licensing. Its licensing is expensive. Currently, when it comes to a customer using Ansible Tower, there is a slight additional cost, but as more customers come to use my infrastructure for Ansible Tower for automation, it will become cheaper and cheaper.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Ansible Tower is pretty expensive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other products. This was the go-to product because we were already a Red Hat shop.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten. There probably is not any other easier solution to automation right now, at least for my environment because we are a Red Hat shop.
flexible and adaptative
What do you like best about the product?
flexible and big capyilarity to reach all the end points
What do you dislike about the product?
lack of postgre SQL support by RedHat in new version
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
reach heterogeneus endpoints
Ansible Automation
What do you like best about the product?
YAML and collections make creating automation simple
What do you dislike about the product?
The community can dillute automation efforts when access to offical repos are blocked behind a paywall
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Simplifying infrastructure automation
Helps with patching and keeping everything compliant
What is our primary use case?
We use it for the bot. It helps to keep tracking all the automation processes that are ongoing in your ecosystem
How has it helped my organization?
It helps with patching and keeping everything compliant.
What is most valuable?
Automation tracking is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement?
The SSM connection access needs improvement because right now, they do everything through SSH.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for a few years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
If there's some cloud add ons, we would increase the usage. Only admins use the solution.
How was the initial setup?
We just create a server, and then we use that server to on-premesis.
What other advice do I have?
Ansible has good performance. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
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