Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 24, 2022
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure DevOps
Ranking in Release Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
128
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (2nd), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (1st)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Release Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure DevOps is 37.7%, down from 38.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 4.2%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
Unique Categories:
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
19.4%
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
41.5%
Configuration Management
18.1%
Network Automation
15.8%
 

Featured Reviews

Akshat Prakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 10, 2024
Allows us to deploy code to production without releasing certain features immediately and agile project management capabilities offer resource-leveling
My company has experienced benefits from using it or from recent updates in Azure Pipelines. For instance, we can manage different code versions from the same repository across different environments. We also use feature flags; the code is deployed, but the feature can be made visible to the end user at a later time. Additionally, as part of the deployment, we integrate automated and regression testing, which stops the deployment if testing fails, thus preventing regression bugs. This saves time and increases productivity by reducing the need for manual testing. Lastly, it integrates with the project management aspects, allowing us to link code deployments with project milestones. Azure DevOps supported our shift towards DevOps culture or practices. We shifted to the cloud environment and started migrating from our data centers about eight or nine years back. It has been a long journey. However, we have used Azure DevOps for almost five to six years in every project. We also use automation testing in Azure, so we have an integrated test suite that allows us to perform functional and regression testing effectively via the Azure DevOps system.
CM
May 7, 2024
Saves thousands of hours and helps to resolve security issues within minutes
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable aspect of Azure DevOps for me is its robust version control functionality, which is critical for our workflow."
"Monitoring is most valuable."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps has been very good for creating pipelines, and all the solutions for creating task management for developers and for the business."
"All of the features related to release management are very good."
"It's a pretty problem-free solution."
"It is a cloud-based system. So, it is stable and scalable."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure DevOps are high-level protection. The protection is very important to the customers to prevent eavesdropping. eavesdropping is when a hacker tries to get into the solution. With this solution is it difficult for them to do it."
"It has made our infrastructure more testable. We are able to build our infrastructure in CI, then are more confident in what we are deploying will work, not breaking everything."
"On the network side, I already have a lot of our firewall related processes automated. If it's not automated all the way from the ticket system, our network team members, our tier-one guys in India, can just go into the Tower web interface and fill in a couple of survey questions."
"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"
"It does not require staff for deployment and maintenance. It just works."
"It is agentless. I don't have to think about which client system my unit has understanding in or not, because I can execute from my system. It will go and configure it, and any module that it is looking for will be shipped out."
"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is that Ansible is agentless."
"The user interface is well-built and very easy to navigate around."
 

Cons

"There are certain features, and reporting that can only be used in PowerBI, but not directly in DevOps."
"The solution is generally stable but not entirely issue-free."
"The user management in the solution could improve."
"Not all companies use the same methodology which could limit the use of this solution."
"Azure DevOps could be improved with more security plugins, especially for SaaS scanning and vulnerability scans."
"I would like to see DevOps have the ability to give us something with a compatibility or traceability matrix."
"It would be great if I could integrate with a human resource type of software that could control timesheets."
"The active directory password system needs some improvement because many times the password for the active directory expires before the set time."
"When you set up Playbooks, I may have one version of the Playbook, but another member of the team may have a different vision, and we will not know which version is correct. We want to have one central repository for managing the different versions of Playbooks, so we can have better collaboration among team members. This is our use case for using Git version control."
"It can use some more credential types. I've found that when I go looking for a certain credential type, such as private keys, they're not really there."
"I have seen indications that the documentation needs improvement. They are providing a "How to Improve Your Documentation" presentation at this conference."
"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."
"The documentation for the installation step of deployment, OpenStack, etc., and these things have to be a bit more detailed."
"On the Dashboard, when you view a template run, it shows all the output. There is a search filter, but it would be nice to able to select one server in that run and then see all that output from just that one server, instead of having to do the search on that one server and find the results."
"The product could do a better job at building infrastructure."
"The web GUI can be a little bit better. There should be a couple of more features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The main agile features are very expensive."
"Its pricing is reasonable for the number of features that you get and the functionality that you can utilize for the agile delivery, which is what we are using it for. I found it extremely cost-effective."
"For Microsoft, it can get expensive when you need heavy-duty machines."
"I don't know what we pay, but I do know what I've seen online. If we switched to JIRA, we will basically have to double our costs because we still have to pay for the DevOps licensing. We're probably spending $100 a month on it. It has only standard licensing fees."
"We pay a monthly license for Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"The price of this solution is fair."
"The price is reasonable, but of course, you can find others that are cheaper such as Atlassian."
"I don't know the pricing of DevOps. It would be much cheaper than ALM because ALM came out as a software product initially. Now they are moving into a cloud and subscription model. In that case, Microsoft is coming from Azure and the cloud and DevOps and software as a service, so it would be much cheaper, but the catch would be that they are trying to get money on all the sides, like an operating system, Microsoft Office, or Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"The pricing for us is huge because we use twenty thousand nodes, so that is a huge infrastructure, but if someone is using a small infrastructure, then the pricing is not so much."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."
"The cost is high, but it still works well."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
27%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Valuable features for project management and tracking in Azure DevOps include a portal displaying test results, check-in/check-out activity, and developer/tester productivity.
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 do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

Azure DevOps, VSTS, Visual Studio Team Services, MS Azure DevOps
Ansible
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alaska Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Columbia, Skype
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure DevOps vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.