5 use cases for automating your infrastructure with Ansible Automation Platform

Infrastructure automation is an area where systems administrators and  IT operations teams can see some of the biggest benefits from automation, including time savings, reducing tedious manual work, and improving the overall health of their systems. In this blog, I've identified the top 5 infrastructure automation use cases for Ansible Automation Platform that you can deploy in your own environment, and I've incorporated new capabilities like Event-Driven Ansible to make managing your infrastructure even easier. 

1. Provisioning Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Ansible Automation Platform

Before you get started with any automation project, we typically recommend using automation analytics to plan and predict the potential cost savings to help prioritize which automation projects will deliver the biggest time and cost savings.  

Then you can use Ansible Automation Platform to create a workflow to build or configure a cloud or datacenter instance for RHEL, while using surveys to gather additional user input to enable further customization to meet any system requirements. You can even introduce an IT service management ticketing option, then review the job success and confirm service availability. 

Watch this video to see it in action: 

2. Managing Configuration and Drift with Ansible Automation Platform

Ongoing Continue reading

The Top 10 Ansible Blogs of 2022

Introduction

If you're looking to brush up on the most popular Ansible information from 2022 (or just grasping at any excuse to break away from your relatives for a few minutes during the holidays), you've come to the right place. What follows are the top 10 blogs that have captured the most attention from Ansible.com readers in 2022. 

10. Introducing the Event-Driven Ansible developer preview

One of the buzzworthy announcements at AnsibleFest 2022 was Event-Driven Ansible, released as Developer Preview by Red Hat. In this blog, Joe Pisciotta, Ansible Product Manager, describes Event-Driven Ansible's integration with 3rd-party event sources and support for establishing rules using "if-then" scenarios. Discover why Event-Driven Ansible makes remediating issues simple and removes the time-consuming customization usually required with "self-healing" approaches. 

9. What's new in Ansible Automation Platform 2.3

Several new features and enhancements were announced as part of Ansible Automation Platform 2.3, such as more flexibility and control over execution nodes in automation mesh, the launch of Ansible validated content to help you get started automating operational tasks, support for LDAP with RBAC, and much more. Sean Cavanaugh, Ansible Technical Marketing Manager, outlines the capabilities of these new Continue reading

3 new Ansible automation hub updates

Beyond the buzz at AnsibleFest 2022 around event-driven automation, availability of Ansible in  AWS and Azure marketplaces, and Project Wisdom, some important changes were happening within Ansible automation hub, so let's take a closer look at the latest developments. 

Content signing for enhanced security

Content signing is a new feature currently available in technology preview in Ansible Automation Platform 2.2 and will be generally available with the release of 2.3. Content signing provides the framework to establish a secure chain-of-custody so you can consume, publish, and share Ansible content with more confidence that it is less vulnerable to tampering and malicious code. With content signing, you now have more control over compliance and your organization's internal security requirements. 

In addition, we have completed signing all of Red Hat Ansible Certified Collections available in Ansible automation hub, and we will work with our partners to sign any new content as it's released.  

Private automation hub is your internal content repository for automation execution environments as well as Ansible content you create or download from Ansible automation hub. In a future release, we hope to enable signing both content and execution environments Continue reading

Introducing the Ansible API for ServiceNow ITSM

One of the most popular platform integrations available to Ansible Automation Platform subscribers in Ansible automation hub is the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow ITSM. This collection helps you create new automation workflows faster based on ServiceNow ITSM while establishing a single source of truth in the ServiceNow configuration management database (CMDB). You can help free teams from hours of manual effort and have greater data integrity within your ServiceNow ITSM instance. 

For ServiceNow users, we've launched a new native ServiceNow application, the API for Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform Certified Content Collection, available exclusively through the ServiceNow store to enhance and support the integration between the two platforms.   

What is the Ansible API for ServiceNow ITSM?

The API for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Certified Content Collection integrates Ansible’s certified content with your ServiceNow instance. Prior to the launch of ServiceNow's Rome API, Ansible users could download the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow ITSM from the Ansible automation hub and directly manage ServiceNow resources using their REST API. 

With the release of Rome, the REST API no longer provided all of the support needed to automate ServiceNow using Continue reading

The top 5 Ansible Automation Platform blogs of 2021

Year-end recaps have a way of encapsulating the most significant topics of the year, ones that sparked a curiosity to learn more, excitement to incorporate into our work, and inspiration to put our core takeaways into practice. As a newer member of the Ansible Automation Platform team, I’m always interested to learn which blogs resonate with our customers. To that end, we’re sharing our top five most read blogs so you can catch up on what you missed as well as gain some insight into what your peers are reading. For our Ansible blog aficionados, we welcome you to read alongside us for a refresher of what was most meaningful to your work this year. 

A common thread running through these posts: Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collections. As you look to expand your automation in 2022, remember that there are over 100 Certified Content Collections from more than 40 partners, and Red Hat to help you jump start your next automation project with consistent and reusable modules, plug-ins and roles. 

Let’s dive in: 

5. Introduction to ansible-test

Even expert developers can make mistakes, so if you’re a busy content creator, you should always test your own Collections Continue reading