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Ansible

Score9.2 out of 10

339 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.

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Categories & Use Cases

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Ansible Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Ansible has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 339 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: 9

  • Automated Provisioning

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

    Category average: 8.8

  • Parallel Execution

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

    Category average: 8.5

Areas for Improvement

  • Version Control

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

    Category average: 8.5

  • Node Management

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

    Category average: 8.2

  • Reporting & Logging

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

    Category average: 7.7

Who Buys & Uses Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Ansible Reviews

What users are saying about Ansible.
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Pros

  • Significant time savings reported by a majority of users (57%)
  • Improved automation and efficiency (43%)
  • Effective for automating patching processes (20%)

Cons

  • Steep learning curve and complexity for some users (3%)
  • Requires expertise to fully leverage its capabilities
  • Reliance on other Red Hat products may increase costs

Save time and avoid complications.

Incentivized
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform so that developers in the DevOps cycle can automatically deploy new versions of applications directly from integration with Jenkins.We also automate tasks such as user management within Linux servers from systems.

Pros

  • Flow control
  • Segmentation of user roles and permissions
  • Integration with other platforms
  • Simple language when programming playbooks

Cons

  • Complexity of configuration and maintenance

Return on Investment

  • Reduce the time that system operations need to perform their tasks.
  • Allows inexperienced users to make changes without causing disruption.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Control-M and HashiCorp Terraform

Other Software Used

HashiCorp Terraform, 11:11 Solutions for AWS, Control-M

Perfect combination of many features.

Incentivized
Asad KhanView profile
Systems Solution Architect in Engineering at Nokia (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a Systems Architect, I deploy K8s clusters and set up deployment systems as a PoC in my lab, and troubleshoot the same in production. Most deployments involve multi-cluster 5G network nodes on any CaaS layer. Ansible helps me automatically configure node settings on top of any IaC tool. This includes multi-OS configuration, simplification of network device configuration, patching, and other related tasks.

Pros

  • It reduces custom scripting efforts because everything can be scripted in simple, human-readable YAML playbooks.
  • Not only servers, but also network devices, VMs, Containers, Kubernetes clusters, etc., can be automated via Ansible, showcasing its extensive list of supported devices.
  • It is agentless, which makes it lightweight and allows for easy integration into CI/CD and GitOps pipelines.
  • Many Tier-1 telcos use Ansible for Day 0/1/2 automation of RAN, transport, and core infrastructure (e.g., network function lifecycle management, NE configuration push, patching VNFs).

Cons

  • Ansible is still not truly declarative like Terraform.
  • Simple automation is fine, but creating complex, scalable automation scripts is very difficult to learn.
  • For a higher number of nodes, Ansible consumes a lot of resources. It needs the paid version of AAP, which requires a cost.

Return on Investment

  • In terms of time, around 70-80 % of savings can be achieved as compared to manually patching the nodes.
  • In terms of network deployment, automating Day-0 and Day-1 of network configuration can result in an overall reduction of 30-40%.
  • In terms of headcount, a reduction of around 40% in human resources can be achieved, as the same team can handle more tasks with Ansible.
  • Depending on scale, the overall ROI of 50-100% can be achieved in 1-3 years

Usability

Alternatives Considered

HashiCorp Terraform, Open Source Puppet and Red Hat OpenShift

Ansible Automation Platform Review

Incentivized
Victor Williams
Linux Administrator in Information Technology at Blue Cross from Blue Shield of Alabama (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We automate everything, automate all the things, as we say. From patch management to user management, anything to do on the RHEL box, we do it. We use it on Windows, we use it on our F5s, we use it on our network equipment. Just automate everything in our organization.

Pros

  • Automate. If you got to do something once, do it once. If you got to do it twice, automate it with Ansible.

Cons

  • I can't think of any right now because I've heard about the Lightspeed and I'm really excited about that. Ansible has been really solid for us. We haven't had any issues. Maybe the upgrade process, but other than that, as coming from a user, it's awesome.
  • Give out Lightspeed for free.

Return on Investment

  • I got all my time back, we have 500 servers, can push a button in Ansible right away without much coding experience in YAML. Just time saved. I don't see any negatives. I don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I kind of am so it's awesome.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Open Source Puppet and Chef Enterprise Automation Stack

Other Software Used

Red Hat Satellite

Getting started with Ansible Automation Platform

Incentivized
Jeff Jacober
Senior Systems Analyst in Information Technology at City of Medicine Hat (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are still fairly new to AAP and trying to figure out the best uses for us. Currently we are working to automate our virtual server deployment and configuration process. Going forward, we would like to use it for Application deployment, Snapshot automation and Network configuration. I would like to also explore event-driven Ansible to do things like restarting IIS or Windows services to help us recover from outages.

Pros

  • Makes Ansible easier to use, with a lower barrier of entry
  • Keeps records and provides analytics on job runs
  • Large collection of modules, including for Windows that allow the automation of a large variety of tasks

Cons

  • Better documentation of how all the options/parameters are meant to be used (when creating things like jobs, templates, inventories, etc)
  • More recommendations of best practices as far as the best way to organize job templates, workflows, roles. Much can be found on how to organize pure Ansible, but not so much for AAP specifically.
  • I have found some things that seem like they should be easy but are not possible. Things like moving a host from one inventory to a different inventory. As far as I know this is not possible and requires deletion and recreation. Maybe I just don't know how this could be done or don't understand the design decisions behind this?

Return on Investment

  • We are still early in our implementation and don't have much yet - but I can say that it has already improved the time it takes to deploy a new virtual server for us, as well as making them more consistent.
  • In working through what jobs are required, it has really improved the communication between our different teams

Usability

Alternatives Considered

HashiCorp Terraform and Microsoft Power Automate

Other Software Used

Microsoft Power Automate

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Review

Incentivized
Matthew Hyclak
Sr System Engineer in Information Technology at Silex Data Solutions (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to help our customers solve business problems. We automate infrastructure and other business processes to ensure high quality and repeatability in addition to reducing time to delivery.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provides a consistent platform that can orchestrate other tools and encourages repeatability from dev up through production.

Pros

  • Day 2 configuration management reducing drift
  • Providing access to users without much Ansible experience
  • Promoting reusability and visibility of code

Cons

  • Architecture changes are leaving it in an uncertain state
  • Move to Openshift with full support could be better
  • Better ability to move code through environments

Return on Investment

  • Encouraging consistency from environment to environment
  • Reduction in outages on systems managed by Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
  • Pushing teams to own their own code

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Open Source Puppet

Other Software Used

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Jenkins