201 ActiveBatch Workload Automation Reviews
Overall Review Sentiment for ActiveBatch Workload Automation
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AB has a ton of features and functionality. I've been using it for about 2 years and anytime I wonder whether AB is capable of doing something, it often turns out that it is. We use it to automate SSIS jobs, upload files to SFTP servers, run powershell scripts, manage encryption and compression, and automating archival procedures to make sure that we don't fill up shared drives. Overall, I think it's a great tool. You can read about my opinion on the drawbacks in the next question, but in general, if you have a ton of jobs to manage or automate, it's a tool that I would recommend. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The UI is a bit quirky and takes some getting used to. Some basic features can be a bit buggy and while support is often helpful, some workarounds don't make a lot of logical sense. The UI makes it easy to set up completion triggers and constraints for your jobs and job plans, but getting an overall picture without having to drill into the properties of all of your plans and jobs can paint an incomplete picture (I think this is due to bugs in the View -> Map feature). Cost has come into question lately in my org, but I don't personally think this is overpriced to the point of excluding it from the conversation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Cross-platform, language agnostic software that allows us to automate jobs and workflows with audit trails and monitoring. Since it is language agnostic, we are able to leverage jobs written in an assortment of languages, from python and bash to java and ruby. Additionally, we can run things like ansible playbooks and capture all the output in a centralized location.
With ActiveBatch, we have been able to quickly deploy new systems in the AWS cloud, configure automated deployments and streamline our day-to-day administrative activities. We've also been able to save money on the cloud by centralizing scheduled jobs from disparate systems into the ActiveBatch environment.
By deploying execution agents within each environment, we're able to segregate jobs, increasing security by minimizing or eliminating cross-environment traffic.
When we've had issues where support was required, the support personnel have been quick to provide documentation to guide us down the right path. If that wasn't enough to resolve the issue, they've been quite helpful in providing remote support via screen sharing teleconferences. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Windows is required in order to run the scheduler software. We are primarily a linux shop, so having to run Windows and MSSQL is not ideal, but was easy enough to spin up on AWS and get configured for ActiveBatch. Additionally, we had to commission another instance to run IIS in order to serve the ActiveBatch Web Console. The initial configuration wasn't trivial for us, as we're not intimately familiar with IIS, but we were able to follow the documentation and get things up and running somewhat quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Great support and resources around the product. Can most likely find everything on the support portal when help is needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Product is complex, but does the job well with automation once learned. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ActiveBatch is easy to use, but still has many capabilities. In my role doing development and release management, I use ActiveBatch on a daily basis. I love the Job Steps library for creating jobs that can automate multiple different tasks. The ActiveBatch change management tool makes promoting code easy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There is nothing that stands out as a negative. For my purposes, ActiveBatch has all that I need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
UI is really clear, and some default dashboards are pretty well build Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We need to manually refresh the LOG view in order to get the result, there is not direct steam as baretail would do.
Maybe you should improve the queuing system of your jobs.
take this example:
we can avoid having one job running multiple times, but we would like to be able to restart it if there is event trying to start it while it is running.
In order to process the new data.
we found a workaroung with two different plan to queue the events in order to skip all the other events. and keep only two (one running, and another one pending the end of the current one) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The built-in features make it easy to create automation tasks. I use the Powershell addin a lot as I am able to just copy and paste a script in and it works. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The queuing feature could use some improvement. Sometimes jobs get hung up and don't always run at the exact times they are configured too and it is difficult to tell when it will actually run when it is in this "hung" or "pending" state. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We enjoy the automation features that we are allowed to use with daily business functions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Our biggest issue we run into is that we have to wait for larger updates or service packs to come out to resolve sometimes critical issues. We would like hotfixes if possible or a way to resolve issues in current environments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Fairly easy to use and replicate jobs once you get acquainted. Flexible, with a lot of options to integrate with other systems, platforms, and scripting languages. Jobs can be scheduled, triggered, and more. The management is centralized and installs and upgrades are fairly seamless and harmless. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Slight learning curve to start, not all options are entirely intuitive. Slightly confusing model with how agents versus workload managers work and such. We have had some jobs that work fine through SQL Server as an example, but fail using AB, without any noticeable reason as to why. Support is generally very helpful and resolves issues, but they were a bit stumped with the SQL Server example above. Training is very expensive, wish they had more available for free, especially when first on-boarding. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I like the fact that I can sleep mor soundly at night know just how rock solid Active Batch really is! It's like the iPhone and Swiss Army Knife of Automation! If it's digital, then Active Batch can automate it! We have been using it since 2012 and it has allow my company to quickly grow and not worry about incease workload. ActiveBatch has never bogged down under increase activity. It is just handles everything we throw at it. It is one of the best applications we use and it scales phenominally! Upgrades are also worry free too! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There is a learning curve with ActiveBatch that makes it a little challenging in the beginning, but once you understand the fundamentals it's like the brightest light being turned on! I honestly can't come up with any other dislikes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
