Red Hat Ansible accelerates hybrid cloud automation

Red Hat has announced several upgrades to its enterprise automation platform, including the latest version of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform with new Red Hat Certified Ansible Content Collections, automation services catalogue, and private Automation Hub. 

Bringing together teams for improved collaboration, these new automation services and offerings connect business managers with automation leaders to better align automation strategies with the needs of the business and expand how automation can be invoked.

In a related announcement, Red Hat previewed an integration between Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management and Ansible Automation Platform, bridging the divide between traditional IT environments and cloud native, container-based solutions. This integration unites two of Red Hat’s industry-leading platforms, Red Hat OpenShift and Ansible Automation Platform, to drive automation across the open hybrid cloud. 

Additional Certified Content Collections: in-demand automation code made more readily available 

Introduced in last year, Ansible Content Collections provide a standardised method for automation developers to build and package automation content, and for implementers to consume them in a portable and scalable way. Ansible Content Collections bring guardrails and structure to automation content, packaging Collections into categories based on automation domain or platform. Collections delivered in Ansible Automation Hub are certified by the Ansible partner network and are tested, validated, and fully supported for enterprise-class production environments.

The newest version of Ansible Automation Platform is slated to include newly certified Ansible Content Collections for Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes Core and VMware vSphere REST API. These Collections showcase Red Hat’s continued commitment to automating cloud and Kubernetes platforms for modern IT. Hybrid cloud use cases have pressed forward, whether it’s utilising native Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift, these Certified Content Collections enable automation for various container management systems.

With the addition of these new Collections, there are now more than 60 Ansible Content Collections available from Red Hat and its partners in Automation Hub. View a full list of supported and certified Ansible Content Collections here. 

Building internal automation content communities with private Automation Hub 

Private Automation Hub enables content creators as part of enterprises to collaborate and publish trusted, verified resources from a single source, helping to streamline Ansible code within an organisation and create a knowledge guide for automation newcomers. More advanced teams can still use this content as a basis for automation, while the organisation gains the ability to manage and control the lifecycle of Ansible automation content as needs scale across the hybrid cloud.

Driving customised automation for the open hybrid cloud 

Announced at Red Hat Summit 2020, the automation services catalogue makes enterprise-specific, pre-approved, curated automation available to infrastructure and application teams, as well as to business users. This capability helps provide IT administrators and security operations teams with greater visibility over what is being automated while not slowing down organisation-wide automation practices. With the addition of the connector technology in the automation services catalogue, customers can now bring the automation services catalogue directly and more securely to their own private infrastructure, enhancing control over what automation practices are being used.

The connector technology also enables organisations to maintain business-specific controls and compliance mechanisms, while developers can still access the information they need. New integrations for Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) also extends the automation services catalogue to platforms like BMC Remedy and ServiceNow, reducing friction in proactively completing ITSM rulesets and standards tasks. This can help drive greater efficiency for teams that are seeking to make Ansible automation a key part of their overall business strategy and not simply a siloed IT component.

Red Hat acquired Ansible in 2015, adding its products to the extensive open source Red Hat software offering. 

According to a 2020 Forrester report commissioned by Red Hat, automation is a necessity; three out of five respondents reported automation as one of their firms’ top initiatives, even amid competing priorities like adoption of cloud, containers, and security management.  

Ansible Automation Platform enables customers to move away from do-it-yourself, siloed approaches and to improve ROI. These customers are automating millions of nodes with Ansible as part of a modernization of management approach. 

Availability 

The latest version of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is slated for November release, including private Automation Hub on-premise or in the cloud of your choice. The connector technology in the automation services catalogue will also be available next month for technology preview. The new Ansible Content Collections are available now on cloud.redhat.com, with additional Collections released on a rolling basis.