"Ansible is agentless. So, we don't need to set up any agent into the computer we are interacting with. The only prerequisite is that the host with which we are going to interact must have the Python interpreter installed on it. We can connect to a host and do our configuration by using Ansible."
"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."
"Ansible provides great reliability when coupled with a versioning system (git). It helps providing predictability to the network by knowing exactly what's being pushed after validating it in production."
"Being a game-changer in configuration management software is what has made Ansible so popular and widespread. Much of IT is based on SSH direct connectivity with a need for running infrastructure in an agentless way, and that has been a big plus. SSH has become a great security standard for managing servers. The whole thing has really become an out-of-the-box solution for managing a Unix estate."
"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."
"We use the infrastructure as a service cloud, that is, we use the features as infrastructure for this. We are not using any platform services."
"The initial installation and setup are very quick."
"This is the go-to tool for anyone looking for standard out-of-the-box capabilities in a fully multitenant public cloud software that they can leverage to offer services to their customers."
"Good features of extensibility, which allows integration of other services."
"The stability of the product is better than just 'good.'"
"The deployment is easy."
"I have found the solution scales well."
"There are various options for scaling and that flexibility is a good option."
"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."
"Accessibility. Ansible uses a CLI by default. Those accustomed to it can find their way and adopt the YAML files easily over time. But, some users are more comfortable using UIs..."
"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."
"Ansible is great, but there are not many modules. You can do about 80% to 90% of things by using commands, but more modules should be added. We cannot do some of the things in Ansible. In Red Hat, we have the YUM package manager, and there are certain options that we can pass through YUM. To install the Docker Community Edition, I'll write the yum install docker-ce command, but because the Docker Community Edition is not compatible with RHEL 8, I will have to use the nobest option, such as yum install docker-ce --nobest. The nobest option installs the most stable version that can be installed on a particular system. In Ansible, the nobest option is not there. So, it needs some improvements in terms of options. There should be more options, keywords, and modules."
"The area which I feel can be improved is the custom modules. For example, there are something like 106 official modules available in the Ansible library. A year ago, that number was somewhere around 58. While Ansible is improving day by day, this can be improved more. For instance, when you need to configure in the cloud, you need to write up a module for that."
"It would be nice to see some new features in respect of the GUI."
"Cloud Director has room for improvement in many areas. One critical thing that comes to mind is the hyperscalers. They could be more seamlessly integrated into the hybrid cloud."
"The product could use a billing feature so we can automate billing for clients."
"In the next release, we would like to see improvements with the pricing. It could be reduced."
"Lacks integration with the hyperscalers."
"This solution could improve by adding root cause analysis."
"There are new updates every quarter, so we need to purchase new support deployment services and some new products."
"This is very simple in OpenShift. We are happy with vCloud in terms of the virtualization but not for redundancy and distribution."
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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 2nd in Configuration Management with 5 reviews while vCloud Director is ranked 5th in Cloud Management with 8 reviews. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.4, while vCloud Director is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform writes "Enables us to efficiently manage an almost unlimited number of nodes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of vCloud Director writes "Great extensibility feature, which enables integration of other services ". Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is most compared with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, Red Hat Satellite, VMware vRealize Automation (vRA), BigFix and Microsoft Azure DevOps, whereas vCloud Director is most compared with VMware vRealize Automation (vRA), VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), Nutanix Calm, vCenter Orchestrator and Cisco Intersight.
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