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Apstra Operating System vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apstra Operating System
Ranking in Network Automation
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Network Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of Apstra Operating System is 2.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 14.0%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform14.0%
Apstra Operating System2.2%
Other83.8%
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

HF
Works at wolterskluwer
Highly secure, useful AB test, and stable
I am using Apstra Operating System for some classes and for my personal use Apstra Operating System's most important features are the security and AB test to define what approach we need to take in my company. Additionally, the solution does not take a lot of maintenance. The report data could…
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Dev Ops Engineer at 11 East Capital
Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Apstra Operating System's most important features are the security and AB test to define what approach we need to take in my company. Additionally, the solution does not take a lot of maintenance."
"I find Apstra Operating System very good to use and would recommend this solution to others."
"The solution is very simple to use."
"The most useful features are the playbooks; we can develop our playbooks and simplify them, doing something like a cross platform."
"The capacity to install products on the operating system is very valuable."
"It is quick to production. It has an API in the back which allows for integrations."
"We can manage all the configuration consistency between all our servers."
"The automation capabilities streamline deployment processes, providing reliability and reducing manual intervention and errors."
"One of the most valuable features is that Ansible is agentless. It does not have dependencies, other than Python, which is very generic in terms of dependencies for all systems and for any environment. Being agentless, Ansible is very convenient for everything."
"Automation is valuable. It saves us time in performing tedious tasks or repetitive tasks."
 

Cons

"The report data could improve in Apstra Operating System."
"It doesn't work well with large-scale infra."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"In my opinion, one thing that needs improvement is mass updates: How I can parallelize that process a little bit better?"
"What I'm trying to figure out, personally, is, when doing mass updates, how I can parallelize that a little bit better. It seems right now - and maybe, it's a shortcoming on my end - that I run through one set of servers, and then another set of servers, ad then another set of servers, but it seems like I could throw a lot of these checks out. Different types of servers, like web servers and DB servers, if I could parallelize that a little bit to make everything run a little bit more efficiently, that would help."
"There is always room for improvement in features or customer support."
"Some of the modules in Ansible could be a bit more mature. There is still a little room for further development. Some performance aspects could be improved, perhaps in the form of parallelism within Ansible."
"There were a few scalability issues. I had no problems as long as the number of servers was less than 500."
"The documentation for the installation step of deployment, OpenStack, etc., and these things have to be a bit more detailed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is competitive."
"Like many Red Hat products, they have a no-cost version of the web application (AWX, formerly Ansible Tower), but you are on your own to install and it is a little more complicated than just installing Ansible."
"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"It is a little pricey but it is affordable. It is not that bad."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

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What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There is no pricing and no licensing required, as Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform ...
 

Also Known As

Apstra OS, AOS
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bloomberg Television, Energy Corporation, A mid-sized financial services company
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Cisco, Infoblox and others in Network Automation. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.