Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs vCenter Configuration Manager comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
296
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
vCenter Configuration Manager
Ranking in Configuration Management
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.9%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 16.6%, down from 18.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Configuration Manager is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license
The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.
Muralitharan KS - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient server management and detailed reporting with flexible deployment capabilities
We are primarily using Ansible for automation purposes as it is a configuration management tool. It is utilized for various activities such as DNS activity, changes to web servers, virtual host settings, and other day-to-day tasks, all of which are templated in Ansible Ansible allows us to manage…
Nikhil Nikhil - PeerSpot reviewer
Compliance management has improved efficiency but licensing changes pose challenges
I am not using any advanced features or AI. I am employing a basic VMware vCenter setup for my infrastructure. Scalability has no major limitations, and the solution is efficient. Overall, it's satisfactory. I would rate the vCenter experience as seven out of ten due to concerns regarding license, pricing, and AI features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Intune is easy to use, and it is able to enforce policies towards multiple devices. It is able to bring multiple classes of devices into the same security posture. I found that very useful."
"Everything has worked better since we started using Intune."
"I have seen a return on investment right from the start of the tool's usage."
"Overall, I like Intune as a solution and would rate it nine out of ten."
"I would rate the overall solution as a 10."
"One of our clients migrated the model workplace based on Intune, achieving a 78 percent cost reduction, which is quite a lot."
"When comparing Microsoft Intune to Jamf, Microsoft Intune is superior."
"Configuration profiles, remediation, scripts, and auto-pilot features are very good."
"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."
"It has improved our organization through provisioning and security hardening. When we do get a new VM, we have been able to bring on a provisioned machine in less than a day. This morning alone, I provisioned two machines within an hour. I am talking about hardening, installing antivirus software on it, and creating user accounts because the Playbooks were predesigned. From the time we got the servers to the actual hand-off, it takes less than an hour. We are talking about having the servers actually authenticate Red Hat Satellites and run the yum updates. All of that can be done within an hour."
"I like the fact that Ansible is agentless."
"RBAC is great around Organizations and I can use that backend as our lab. Ingesting stuff into the JSON logs, into any sort of logging collector; it works with Splunk and there are other collectors as well. It supports Sumo and that helps, I can go create reports in Sumo Logic. Workflows are an interesting feature. I can collect a lot of templates and create a workflow out of them."
"Since it is in YAML, if I have to explain it to somebody else, they can easily understand it."
"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."
"The reason I like Ansible is, first, the coding of it is very straightforward, it's very human-readable. I'm also on a contract, and I can clearly iterate and bring people up to speed very quickly on writing a Playbook compared with writing up a Puppet manifest or a Salt script."
"The development tools are decent and being able to consistently manage those servers is really the key, which is why we went with Ansible in the first place."
"The solution is stable and we haven't run into issues with bugs or glitches."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the virtual machine management across different hosts, located in different areas."
"It is a very stable solution."
"vCenter Configuration Manager is a stable solution that is very easy to manage and deploy."
"This solution is good for individual storage."
"The solution is excellent at automating processes."
"The platform is straightforward and user friendly."
"We can scale the solution as needed."
 

Cons

"Enhancements for managing MacOS more comprehensively would be beneficial."
"The scalability could be improved, and like most other MDM products, Intune is good but not 100% there yet."
"One thing I would suggest is that servers are not getting managed through Microsoft Intune."
"The synchronization of devices takes a significant amount of time, between 15 minutes and two hours. Microsoft should work on reducing this sync time to improve efficiency."
"Intune could be improved by expanding its third-party patching capabilities for a more comprehensive solution."
"It would be helpful if there was proactive remediation."
"Microsoft Intune lacks the ability to provide seamless remote assistance or remote control."
"The reports aren't complete, and it's not easy to build custom reports. For example, Windows Autopilot isn't working well in cases where the computers don't have a good internet connection. Then the option is not good enough."
"Ansible can face scalability issues, such as limitations when trying to scale up infrastructure. It might struggle with connection dropping or spawning additional VMs under certain conditions."
"It would be helpful to have templates for common configurations. It would make it much easier and faster rather than creating a whole script. The templates would decrease the learning curve as well."
"There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions."
"The job workflow needs to be worked on. It's not really clear to how you actually link things together. What they probably could do is provide an example workflow on how to stitch things together. I think that would be very helpful."
"Improvements should be made in terms of execution speed, which is, I believe, the most lacking feature. Aside from that, re-triggering a failed task is another useful feature."
"Documentation could be improved. Many times, if I'm looking for something, I have to Google it in a lot of places, then figure out what the best approach will be. There are some best practices documents, but they don't give you the information."
"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."
"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."
"The only challenge my company faces with the solution in relation to the customers is something that is directly related to the tool's pricing."
"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Occasionally, we encounter issues with updates regarding failing or losing configuration information for the product."
"I think the logging side should be improved because it's pretty difficult to keep up to date VMware and with vCenter."
"If the solution could manage on-premises and cloud resources with the help of one tool, it would be an extra agent."
"The interface itself is not very user-friendly."
"Regarding the licensing part, previously I was able to acquire the license with an eight-core configuration. Now it requires a 16-core setup, which is difficult for customers who have fewer connections to the servers."
"I would like there to be support for this solution in Iran."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Most of our clients come to us with licensing already in place. On average, it costs $6 per device per month to add Intune to an Office 365 subscription, but I am not sure."
"It is not a cheap solution. The price for a device when you start using it at a large scale can be improved. It is covered under our enterprise agreement. We pay once a year. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"Microsoft Intune costs about $7 per user per month, which is somewhat on the pricier end. That said, it's a reliable product, so it's fair."
"Microsoft offers some licensing where it's included at no extra cost when customers are already using the licenses. In such a case, it's a really good value. If you have to buy the licensing for it, it's probably on par with other solutions. It isn't substantially more or less expensive. The great thing is that it is included in some of Microsoft's licensed packages. So, some customers don't have to spend additional money for it. Typically, most providers that support Intune do charge a management fee of some sort or some fee. Certainly, we're no exception."
"We spend a lot of money on Intune licensing, and some of our users have to be double licensed just because of how our dev and corporate environments are segmented."
"The price of Intune is included with the license for Office 365, so we don't have to pay anything extra for it."
"Its price is quite okay. I wish they provide certain additional features with the same license."
"It's affordable. In comparison to the competitors, the price depends on what features you need from Intune, but it's affordable. There are no hidden costs, but there are some features that go for a premium price. Those are the add-ons for which you have to pay extra."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
"We use the open-source version of the solution."
"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"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."
"The product price and licensing fees are reasonable, especially when compared to other products in the market."
"This product is not cheap. I have a yearly license for vCenter and the license is not cheap."
"Users need to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution, which is expensive."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"I have a license to cover four hosts."
"Price-wise, the product is an affordable one. The additional expenses, apart from the licensing costs of the solution, are attached to the support a user wants to receive from vCenter Configuration Manager's end."
"We have to pay for the whole bundle and individual pricing is not available. One license costs us almost $200 every year."
"It is on a yearly basis."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
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 vCenter Configuration Manager?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Configuration Manager?
Nowadays, it is a bit expensive. It's costly, primarily due to the licensing aspect.
What needs improvement with vCenter Configuration Manager?
My impression on the impact of the real-time monitoring features of vCenter Configuration Manager is that it's somewh...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Ansible
vCM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Bank Al Bilad, Thomas-Krenn.AG, Pronto!, Unimed Juiz de Fora
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. vCenter Configuration Manager and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.