Latest release of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform helps orgs get the most out of automation

Red Hat announced key enhancements to the Ansible Automation portfolio, including the latest version of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and new Red Hat Certified Ansible Content Collections available on Automation Hub.

The latest release of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform helps organizations expand automation to new domains while increasing productivity and cross-team collaboration. As a component of the latest platform release, new Ansible Content Collections developed, tested, and supported by Red Hat enable organizations to get the most up-to-date automation content.

A new report from Forrester Research highlights that, “Your intelligent automation roadmap and maturity will make you a winner (or a loser).” In light of shifting global dynamics, automation has moved to the forefront of IT priorities in an effort to help organizations move faster and more efficiently.

To get the most out of automation, however, IT teams need more than just an automation tool — they require smarter, more reliable automation technologies.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform helps organizations accelerate their automation efforts with access to the latest Ansible innovations and technology as they need it, while still providing the security features required for production ready workloads.

In addition to Ansible Content Collections, the latest version of the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform includes the availability of Ansible Tower 3.7, the introduction of automation services catalog, and updates to Automation Analytics.

A faster path to the latest tested and trusted Ansible automation innovations

As automation requirements evolve, organizations need the ability to extend automation capabilities to help them expand into new domains more quickly and safely.

First announced with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in Fall 2019, Ansible Content Collections provides a continuously updated set of curated automation content, helping to shorten the time to value and improve the efficiency of maintaining and consuming automation by enabling organizations to reuse Ansible content at scale.

With the launch of Red Hat-maintained Ansible Content Collections, Red Hat is publishing 17 new Collections that are all written and supported by Red Hat. Collections are available for many popular network, security and cloud partners, including AWS, Arista, Cisco, IBM, Juniper, Splunk, VyOS platforms and more.

This feature can help organizations deploy automation with greater confidence, knowing that it has been tested and is backed by Red Hat’s award-winning support. Collections are published asynchronously from Ansible product releases, making it easier for organizations to access the latest Collections as they become available.

With the addition of these Red Hat-written Collections, there are now 49 certified Collections available from Red Hat and partners in Automation Hub.

Deeper integration across Red Hat’s management portfolio

In addition to extending automation for partner technologies, Ansible Content Collections help further integrate Red Hat’s management products. New Collections are available for:

• Ansible Tower Content Collection enables organizations to configure, manage, and operate their Ansible Tower environments at scale. With the Collection, users can create and modify inventories, credentials, and Ansible Tower job templates, as well as launch and monitor Ansible Tower jobs.
• Red Hat Insights Content Collection enables organizations to automate manual tasks by using the Red Hat Insights API. These common tasks include installation and registration of Red Hat Insights clients, executing Ansible Playbooks for issue remediation and, through integration with Ansible Tower, automating compliance activities and serving as a dynamic inventory source.
• Red Hat Satellite Content Collection enables organizations to automate manual tasks by using the Red Hat Satellite API. Users can build and configure a Satellite environment from start to finish, providing complete end-to-end management of Red Hat Satellite via Ansible.

New levels of intelligence and increased ease of use

In addition to Ansible Content Collections, the latest release of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform includes new features and enhancements that help simplify automation for new as well as experienced users while increasing the speed and flexibility of Ansible. These updates include:

• Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.7 adds new capabilities that help enable customers to engage automation faster and at a larger scale. New updates include tweaks to help eliminate bottlenecks in job processing, as well as optimizing the processing of common API queries and a rework of the user interface communication protocols to maintain performance.
• Automation Analytics automation calculator, an addition to Automation Analytics, enables users to evaluate the value of automation at their organization and customize it to their individual company’s data. It can measure past, current and future return on investment, providing real-time metrics around effectiveness to encourage wider adoption of automation across more domains.
• Automation services catalog provides lifecycle management for automation resources, spanning the provisioning, retirement and logging of Ansible platforms across physical, virtual, cloud or container-based environments. This delivers greater visibility over what is being automated and helps organizations to maintain the controls and compliance prescribed by their business.

Availability

The latest innovations available in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, including Ansible Content Collections, are available now on cloud.redhat.com. New Collections will be released on a rolling basis.

Thomas Anderson, vice president, Ansible Automation, Red Hat: “To meet evolving business demands in the face of uncertain global conditions, we see IT organizations accelerating their automation efforts to help drive faster innovation while managing demand surges due to remote workforces.

“The latest release of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform helps to further meld automation innovation with production stability, offering greater confidence to organizations that they can adopt new automation technologies to expand IT footprints while still supporting mission-critical environments.”