Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs SaltStack comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (2nd)
SaltStack
Ranking in Configuration Management
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Network Automation (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 12.2%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 18.1%, up from 13.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SaltStack is 2.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
Unique Categories:
Remote Access
5.5%
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)
37.0%
Release Automation
4.2%
Network Automation
15.8%
 

Featured Reviews

WA
Jun 3, 2024
Is flexible, improves productivity, and is user-friendly
Microsoft Intune simplifies endpoint and security management by unifying app deployment, device administration, and security features under one cloud-based platform. This lets us easily generate reports, and even remotely wipe missing devices through the Azure portal, enhancing overall endpoint protection. Intune's user experience has been fantastic! The flexibility, especially with the company portal, allows users to independently install applications. This eliminates the need to constantly request installations from IT, saving everyone time. Initially, some resistance and a learning curve slowed our adoption of Intune, but its benefits became clear during the shift to a remote workforce because of COVID-19. After initial deployment in 2020-2021, Intune simplified onboarding for new hires with remote access, allowing them to sign in to their laptops and gain immediate access to company resources. Microsoft Intune helps with hybrid work models to secure company data by allowing employees to access work resources with BYOD while enforcing security measures on those devices. Intune has positively affected our IT team's productivity. Everything is automated so their workloads have been reduced by 50 percent. Intune has allowed us to consolidate other vendors.
RM
May 8, 2024
Makes automation easy and helps with standardization
There should be consistency. I know that it is always changing, but when we are trying to get some users to do something in basic Ansible that they are not really interested in doing but their job requires them to do it, they start finding inconsistencies. A good example of that is that we have people who are trying to automate things with Windows and Active Directory. There is a community version of the Windows collection that deals with Active Directory. You can use a lot of that code as it is described. It works with the certified Microsoft Active Directory collection if you take the same information because there are the same parameters and values, and the only thing that changes is the collection name. If you switch that out, it does not work, so having a new person run into a problem that even a seasoned person cannot understand does not work. It turns them off. You want them to have success early on. Sometimes in Ansible, you run into some inconsistencies that you do not understand and then you are concerned because it says, "We are going to deprecate this." You are like, "How long do I have to keep using this thing that is going to be deprecated before I have to move on to this other thing?" That just does not seem to work.
it_user538251 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 23, 2016
We have moved from managing a handful of individual servers to being able to manage large scale collections.
There are a number of bugs and regression errors that can make it frustrating at times, but given the flexibility so far I have found adequate workarounds. The GITFS is flawed and requires a lot more work. We were able to construct our own workaround with local clones of all git repositories that are refreshed whenever a new commit or merge is made. GITFS is a feature in SaltStack which allows the salt-master to directly interact with git repositories. In theory, this is an incredibly efficient and useful capability. However, when implemented, we found server processes and load would escalate out of control whenever anyone made a git commit to the GITFS repositories. We were using v2015.8.5 at the time. After researching the problem with the SaltStack community, we learned that there were multiple problems in the implementation of GITFS and what we witnessed was experienced by other users. Several SaltStack users recommended not using GITFS. As a workaround, I set up our salt-master with its own local copy of all of our git repositories and made use of the salt event reactor feature. When a git commit is made on our git server, a git hook triggers a salt event. Salt-master reacts to the salt event by performing a pull on its local repository copy. Its not as slick as the intended design of GITFS, but it works very well and has proven quite stable, completely eliminating the problems we experienced with GITFS. At some point in the future we will revisit the GITFS feature, but for now we are satisfied with the current solution.

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 easy to use."
"Based on my experience, I find Intune very flexible for managing Windows devices. We can use scripting, and we can make use of the self-service portal or the company portal to publish some of the applications for Windows."
"The solution is scalable. We currently have tens of thousands of users within our organization using the solution."
"Maturity makes it a stable product."
"Autopilot is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune."
"A valuable feature is user enrollment, where users can enroll their devices in their organizations themselves."
"One of the standout features of Intune is its seamless accessibility to work data, eliminating the need to be tied to an office or a desktop."
"Compliance and the policies that can be set are the most valuable features."
"It does not require staff for deployment and maintenance. It just works."
"It is very easy to use, and there is less room for error."
"Some colleagues and other companies use it and comment that it is easy to use, easy to understand, and offers good features."
"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."
"It is quick to production. It has an API in the back which allows for integrations."
"This solution allows us to stitch a lot of different parts of the workflow together."
"The solution is very simple to use."
"Managing our inventory is a big pain point. Right now, we have Satellite, but we can tie it in with Satellite, so we can actually manage things and automate the entire deployment stack, instead of trying to grab things from tickets, then generating Kickstart, and using that to get things in Satellite. That doesn't work well. We can do the whole deployment stack using the inventory share between Tower and Satellite."
"The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."
"SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale."
"It is a highly stable solution."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"I want to build automation that is intelligent, part of the fabric of our environment, and is somewhat self-sustaining. I think SaltStack can help me do this."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
 

Cons

"It just doesn't handle software updates well at all by itself. You need to be a scripting wizard to make those happen properly, or you use third-party tools. The Windows feature updates are very difficult to implement. I would like to see a proprietary built-in remote control tool. I know that they have Team Viewer integrated, but it is not seamless. It would be nice if they had a seamless remote desktop capability directly from the Intune console."
"Onboarding of endpoint devices is not straightforward. The onboarding process was a little heavier than I thought it would be. That's the key improvement area. Obviously, the more control you have over the devices, the better it is."
"Manually syncing devices to enforce policies is cumbersome."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see some kind of analytics report."
"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."
"Once it's configured it is unobtrusive, but it does take some hands-on to configure and deploy it properly."
"Reporting and troubleshooting for the application deployment could be better. It's very difficult to understand."
"Intune could add more Linux security features and more integration with on-prem devices. The application deployments can also be improved."
"There could be more stuff in the workflows. I hope that if I have ten templates with different services on it, workflow could auto-populate all the template-based services."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"From Red Hat Insights point of view, the product is not on top as it is not responding as per the demand...Like on cloud platforms, you can see the main parts of Red Hat Insights, along with the inventory of all your apps. So, that is missing in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform."
"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."
"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 scalability of the solution has some shortcomings."
"For a couple of the API integrations, there has been a lack of documentation."
"What I would like to see is a refined Dashboard to see, when I log in: Here are all my jobs, here are how many times they've executed; some kind graphical stitching-together of the workflows and jobs, and how they're connected. Also, those "failed hosts," what does that mean? We have a problem, a failed host can be anything. Is SSH the reason it failed? Is the job template why it failed? It doesn't really distinguish that."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"Web UI."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"It is difficult to set up."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is quite okay. I wish they provide certain additional features with the same license."
"Pricing can be improved."
"The price is reasonable, but they should lower it a bit to make it more competitive. It's cheaper than AirWatch and other products, but I still feel like Microsoft can make a base version or with Exchange online or a la carte only Intune version which will be useful. A customer who doesn't want to go full-fledged E3 or E5 can take out or consume an Intune solution only for their purpose, and we want to target that customer."
"The cost is handled through our Office 365 license, so I have yet to be able to compare it directly with other tools in its class."
"Intune is included in the Microsoft 365 licensing package that we have."
"Consider the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite rather than choosing specific sub-components, e.g. only Microsoft Intune."
"There is a license required to use this solution. However, it was part of a bundle package. Microsoft Intune is far less expensive than other solutions, such as Workspace ONE."
"It is reasonable for the features it has."
"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."
"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."
"It’s an open-source tool."
"The solution is free of cost."
"It is an open-source product."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
27%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
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 h...
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 ...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
What do you like most about SaltStack?
We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CI...
What is your primary use case for SaltStack?
We use SaltStack for configuration management, where we maintain configurations of 150 servers. It also helps with fi...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Ansible
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
IBM CloudTD BankScotiaBankLinkedIneBayLiberty MutualTargetHyattCyxteraNetAppFacebookLyft
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. SaltStack and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.