What’s New and What’s Changed in the Ansible Content Collection for Kubernetes
Increasing business demands are driving the need for increased automation to support rapid, yet stable, and reliable deployments of applications and supporting infrastructure. Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies are no different. That is why we recently released kubernetes.core 1.1, our first Certified Content Collection for deploying and managing Kubernetes applications and services.
Prior to the release of kubernetes.core 1.1, its contents were released as community.kubernetes. With this content becoming Red Hat supported and certified, a name change was in order. We are in the process of making that transition, starting with this release.
In this blog post, we will go over what else has changed and what’s new in this Content Collection as it transitions and enhances it from its community roots.
Focus on The Future
In looking to create a stable and supported release from the upstream sources that Red Hat is known for, the first thing we did was look at what was in community.kubernetes and elsewhere to organize it for the future. This not only led to the aforementioned name change: the content and underlying code was reorganized to be more maintainable and ready to serve as the Continue reading
Automating Helm using Ansible
Increasing business demands are driving the need for increased automation to support rapid, yet stable, and reliable deployments of applications and supporting infrastructure. Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies are no different. For the Kubernetes platform, Helm is the standard means of packaging, configuring and deploying applications and services onto any cluster.
We recently released the kubernetes.core 1.1, our first Red Hat Certified Content Collection release, for general use. A big part of the new content that has been introduced is support for automating Helm operations. In this blog post, I will show you some common scenarios for its use in your automation.
Please note that prior to the release of kubernetes.core 1.1, its contents were released as community.kubernetes. With this content becoming Red Hat support and certified content, a name change was in order. We are in the process of making that transition.
A Quick Introduction to Helm
Helm is an open source tool used for packaging and deploying applications on Kubernetes. It is often called Kubernetes Package Manager. It is widely adopted by the Kubernetes community and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) graduate project.
Helm simplifies deployment of the applications by abstracting Continue reading
Control your content with private Automation Hub
Private Automation Hub is now available as part of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform release 1.2, providing an easier way for our customers to manage their Ansible content. Whether they produce private content, access trusted and supported content from Red Hat or obtain content from third party or other community sources, an internally controlled capability is essential to support the continued growth of automation. As automation becomes critical to managing IT activities, so too becomes the need to have a focal point where collaboration can be encouraged, content shared and trust reinforced.
Private Automation Hub is a self-hosted Ansible content management system. Organizations can host private hubs on their own infrastructure and manage it themselves. Similar to how Red Hat Satellite enables Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers to manage operating system content, private Automation Hub enables automation teams to manage Ansible automation content. Private Automation Hub allows curation and distribution of Ansible content as close as possible to Ansible Automation Platform clusters. Private Automation Hub is included in the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform subscription.
Ansible content can be broken up into three main categories:
- Community content found in Ansible Galaxy
- Red Hat certified and supported content Continue reading
Getting started with Ansible security automation: Threat Hunting
AnsibleFest has just wrapped up, with a whole track dedicated to security automation, our answer to the lack of integration across the IT security industry. If you’re looking for a use case to start with, our investigation enrichment blog will give you yet another example of where Ansible can facilitate typical operational challenges of security practitioners.
Ansible security automation is about integrating various security technologies with each other. One part of this challenge is the technical complexity: different products, interfaces, workflows, etc. But another equally important part is getting the processes of different teams in the security organization aligned. After all, one sign of successful automation is the deployment across team boundaries.
This is especially true with threat hunting activities: when security analysts suspect a malicious activity or want to prove a hypothesis, they need to work with rules and policies to fine tune the detection and identification. This involves changes and configurations on various target systems managed by different teams.
In this blog post, we will start with a typical day-to-day security operations challenge and walk through some example threat hunting steps - adding more teams and products over the course to finally show how Red Hat Ansible Automation Continue reading
Best of Fest: AnsibleFest 2020
Thank you to everyone who joined us over the past two days for the AnsibleFest 2020 virtual experience. We had such a great time connecting with Ansible lovers across the globe. In case you missed some of it (or all of it), we have some event highlights to share with you! If you want to go see what you may have missed, all the AnsibleFest 2020 content will be available on demand for a year.
Community Updates
This year at AnsibleFest 2020, Ansible Community Architect Robyn Bergeron kicked off with her keynote on Tuesday morning. We heard how with Ansible Content Collections, it’s easier than ever to use Ansible the way you want or need to, as a contributor or an end user. Ansible 2.10 is now available, and Robyn explained how the feedback loop got us there. If you want to hear more about the Ansible community project, go watch Robyn’s keynote on demand.
Product Updates
Ansible’s own Richard Henshall talked about the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product updates and new releases. In 2018, we unveiled the Ansible certified partner program and now we have over 50 platforms certified. We are bridging traditional Continue reading
Deep Dive: ACL Configuration Management Using Ansible Network Automation Resource Modules
In October 2019 as part of the Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.9 release, the Ansible Network Automation team introduced the first resource modules. These opinionated network modules make network automation easier and more consistent for those automating various network platforms in production. The goal for resource modules is to avoid creating and maintaining overly complex jinja2 templates for rendering and pushing network configuration.
This blog post covers the newly released ios_acls resource module and how to automate manual processes associated with switch and router configurations. These network automation modules are used for configuring routers and switches from popular vendors (but not limited to) Arista, Cisco, Juniper, and VyOS. The access control lists (ACLs) network resource modules are able to read ACL configuration from the network, provide the ability to modify and then push changes to the network device. These opinionated network resource modules make network automation easier and more consistent for those automating various network platforms in production. I’ll walk through several examples and describe the use cases for each state parameter (including three newly released state types) and how these are used in real world scenarios.
The Certified Content Collection
This blog uses the cisco.ios Continue reading
IT Leader Channel at AnsibleFest 2020
Whether you have automated different domains within your business or are just getting started, creating a roadmap to automation that can be passed between teams and understood at different levels is critical to any automation strategy.
We’ve brought back the IT Decision Maker track at AnsibleFest this year after its debut in 2019, featuring sessions that help uplevel the conversation about automation, create consensus between teams and get automation goals accomplished faster.
What you can expect
There are a variety of sessions in the IT Decision Maker track. A few are focused on specific customer use cases of how they adopted and implemented Ansible. These tracks are great companions to our customer keynotes, including those from CarMax and PRA Health Sciences, that will dive into their Ansible implementation at a technical level. This track aims to cover the many constituents of automation within a business and how to bring the right type of teams together to extend your automation to these stakeholders.
Newcomers to AnsibleFest will get a lot out of this track, as many of the sessions are aimed at those with a beginner’s level knowledge of Ansible Automation Platform and its hosted services. Those Continue reading
Culture at AnsibleFest 2020
At Red Hat, we’ve long recognized that the power of collaboration enables communities to achieve more together than individuals can accomplish on their own. Developing an organizational culture that empowers communities to flourish and collaborate -- whether in an open source community or for an internal community of practice -- isn’t always straightforward. This year at AnsibleFest, the Culture topic aims to demystify some of these areas by sharing the stories, practices, and examples that can get you on your path to better collaboration.
Culture at AnsibleFest: “Open” for participation
Because we recognize that culture is not a “one size fits all” topic, we’ve made sure to sprinkle nearly every track at AnsibleFest with relevant content to help every type of Ansible user (or manager of Ansible users!) participate in developing healthy cultures and communities of automation inside their organizations.
Whether you’re interested in contributing to open source communities, learning how others have grown the use of Ansible inside their departments or organizations, or if you’re simply interested in building healthy, diverse, inclusive communities, inside or outside the workplace -- the Culture (cross) Channel at AnsibleFest has you covered.
Be a Cultural Catalyst for Continue reading
AnsibleFest 2020 Live Q&A
We are less than a week away from AnsibleFest 2020! We can’t wait to connect with you and help you connect with other automation lovers. We have some great content lined up for this year’s virtual experience and that includes some amazing Live Q&A Sessions. This year, you will be able to get your questions answered from Ansible experts, Red Hatters and Ansible customers. Let’s dive into what you can expect.
Tuesday, October 13
11am
Live Q&A: Get all your network automation questions answered with Brad Thornton, Iftikhar Khan and Sean Cavanaugh
In this session, a panel of experts discuss a wide range of use cases around network automation. They will talk about the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and the product direction including Ansible Network Collections, resource modules and managing network devices in a GitOps model. Bring your questions for the architects and learn more about how Red Hat is helping organizations operationalize automation in their network while bridging gaps between different IT infrastructure teams.
Live Q&A: Bridging traditional, container, and edge platforms through automation with Joe Fitzgerald, Ashesh Badani, and Stefanie Chiras
Join this panel discussion, moderated by Kelly Fitzpatrick (Redmonk), to hear from Continue reading
Getting Started With AWS Ansible Module Development and Community Contribution
We often hear from cloud admins and developers that they’re interested in giving back to Ansible and using their knowledge to benefit the community, but they don’t know how to get started. Lots of folks may even already be carrying new Ansible modules or plugins in their local environments, and are looking to get them included upstream for more broad use.
Luckily, it doesn’t take much to get started as an Ansible contributor. If you’re already using the Ansible AWS modules, there are many ways to use your existing knowledge, skills and experience to contribute. If you need some ideas on where to contribute, take a look at the following:
- Creating integration tests: Creating missing tests for modules is a great way to get started, and integration tests are just Ansible tasks!
- Module porting: If you’re familiar with the boto3 Python library, there’s also a backlog of modules that need to be ported from boto2 to boto3.
- Repository issue triage: And of course there’s always open Github issues and pull requests. Testing bugs or patches and providing feedback on your use cases and experiences is very valuable.
The AWS Ansible Content Collections
Starting with Ansible 2.10, the AWS Continue reading
The Network CLI is Dead, Long Live XML! (just kidding, it’s an Ansible+NETCONF+YANG Deep Dive)
Now that I've startled you, no, the network CLI isn’t going away anytime soon, nor are people going to start manipulating XML directly for their network configuration data. What I do want to help you understand is how Ansible can now be used as an interface into automating the pushing and pulling of configuration data (via NETCONF) in a structured means (via YANG data models) without having to truly learn about either of these complex concepts. All you have to understand is how to use the Ansible Content Collection as shown below, obfuscating all technical implementation details that have burdened network operators and engineers for years.
Setting the stage
Before we even start talking about NETCONF and YANG, our overall goal is for the network to leverage configuration data in a structured manner. This makes network automation much more predictable and reliable when ensuring operation state. NETCONF and YANG are the low-level pieces of the puzzle, but we are making it easier to do via well known Ansible means and methodologies.
What we believe as Ansible developers is that NETCONF and YANG aren't (and shouldn't) be quintessential or ultimate goals for network automation engineers. You should not need to Continue reading
Customer Spotlights at AnsibleFest 2020
AnsibleFest 2020 will be here before we know it, and we cannot wait to connect with everyone in October. We have some great content lined up for this year’s virtual experience and that includes some amazing customer spotlights. This year you will get to hear from CarMax, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC, T-Mobile, PRA International and CEPSA. These customers are using Ansible in a variety of ways, and we hope you connect to their incredible stories of teamwork and transformative automation.
Customer Spotlights
Benjamin Blizard, a Network Engineer at T-Mobile, will explore how T-Mobile transformed from a disparate organization with difficulty enforcing standards to a collaborative group of engineers working from repeatable templates and processes. T-Mobile, a major telecommunications provider, uses Ansible Automation Platform to standardize processes across their organization. Ben will show how automation supports T-Mobile’s compliance standards, data integrity, and produces speed and efficiency for network teams.
What Next?
Join us for AnsibleFest 2020 to hear from more customer like T-mobile talk about their automation journey. Make sure to go and register today and check out the session catalog that lists all the content that we have prepared for you this year. We look Continue reading
Introducing the VMware REST Ansible Content Collection
The VMware Ansible modules as part of the current community.vmware Collection are extremely popular. According to GitHub, it's the second most forked Collection1, just after community.general. The VMware modules and plugins for Ansible have benefited from a stream of contributions from dozens of users. Many IT infrastructure engineers rely on managing their VMware infrastructure by means of a simple Ansible Playbook. The vast majority of the current VMware modules are built on top of a dependent python library called pyVmomi, also known as vSphere Automation SDK for Python.
Why a new VMware Ansible Content Collection?
VMware has recently introduced the vSphere REST API for vSphere 6.0 and later, which will likely replace the existing SOAP SDK used in the community.vmware Collection.
Since the REST API’s initial release, vSphere support for the REST API has only improved. Furthermore, there is no longer a need for any dependent python packages. In order to maintain the existing VMware modules in the community.vmware Collection, a set of modules specifically for interacting with the VMware REST API is now available in the newly created vmware.vmware_rest Collection.
If you compare modules used with the VMware vSphere Continue reading
Developing and Testing Ansible Roles with Molecule and Podman – Part 2
Molecule is a complete testing framework that helps you develop and test Ansible roles, which allows you to focus on role content instead of focusing on managing testing infrastructure. In the first part of this series, we’ve successfully installed, configured and used Molecule to set up new testing instances.
Now that the instances are running, let’s start developing the new role and apply Molecule to ensure it runs according to the specifications.
This basic role deploys a web application supported by the Apache web server. It must support Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 and Ubuntu 20.04.
Developing the Ansible Role with Molecule
Molecule helps in the development stage by allowing you to “converge” the instances with the role content. You can test each step without worrying about managing the instances and test environment. It provides quick feedback, allowing you to focus on the role content, ensuring it works in all platforms.
In the first part of this series, we initialized a new role “mywebapp”. If you’re not there yet, switch to the role directory “mywebapp” and add the first task, installing the Apache package “httpd” using the “package” Ansible module. Edit the file “tasks/main.yaml” and include Continue reading
Security Channel at AnsibleFest 2020
Security automation is an area that encompasses different practices, such as investigation & response, security compliance, hardening, etc. While security is a prominent topic now more than ever, all of these activities also greatly benefit from automation.
For the second year at AnsibleFest, we will have a channel dedicated to security automation. We talked with channel Lead Massimo Ferrari to learn more about the security automation channel and the sessions within it.
Security Channel
The sessions in this channel will show you how to introduce and consume Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in different stages of maturity of your security organization as well as using it to share processes through cross-functional teams. Sessions include guidance from customers, Red Hat subject matter experts and certified partners.
What will Attendees learn?
The target audience is security professionals who want to learn how Ansible can support and simplify their activities, and automation experts tasked with expanding the footprint of their automation practice and support security teams in their organization. This track is focused on customer stories and technical guidance on response & remediation, security operations and vulnerability management use cases.
Content is suitable for both automation veterans and Continue reading
Operations Channel at AnsibleFest 2020
AnsibleFest 2020 is right around the corner and we could not be more excited. This year we have some great content in each of our channels. Here is a preview of what attendees can expect from the Operations channel at AnsibleFest.
Operations Channel
This channel will take Operators on an automation journey through the Technical Operations lifecycle and how The Ansible Automation Platform is the center of your automation goals. Learn how to get your automation moving with Certified Content Collections, then scale out with execution environments and tune the performance. Once you are running at scale we have tools to show you what teams are using automation and how much it is saving you with some real world examples and by using Analytics.
You should be leaving with some great examples and walkthroughs on infrastructure automation, from operating systems to public cloud and how you can leverage Ansible Automation Platform to foster cross-functional team collaboration and empower your whole organization with automation they need.
There will be something for everyone. You’ll get to hear from customers, Red Hatters and our partners. Also pick up some tips for your server deployments, performance and cluster management.
Operation Continue reading
Developer Channel at AnsibleFest 2020
As a developer, have you ever made a change that takes down an entire Kubernetes production cluster, requiring you to rebuild all YAML and automation scripts to get production back up? Have you ever wanted to create reproducible, self-contained environments that can be run locally or in production? Welcome to the new AnsibleFest Developer Channel! Here you can learn how Ansible is critical to the journey of the developer as an open-source software configuration management, provisioning and application-deployment tool that enables infrastructure as code.
Ansible Developer Channel
Many themes will be presented in the Ansible Developer Channel, including Kubernetes operations, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform use cases, as well as execution speed and development efficiency considerations. You can learn how Ansible can streamline Kubernetes Day 2 Operations, where monitoring, maintenance and troubleshooting come into play and the application moves from a development project to an actual strategic advantage for your business. You will also learn how Ansible execution environments solve problems for developers using Ansible Automation Platform and how to create self-contained environments that can be run locally or in production Red Hat Ansible Tower deployments. In addition, you can learn how to optimize execution speed and Continue reading
Telco Mini Channel at AnsibleFest 2020
As we adapt AnsibleFest into a free virtual experience this year, we wanted to share with our automation lovers what to expect. Seasoned pros and brand new Ansiblings alike can find answers and guidance for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, the enterprise solution for building and operating automation at scale. We are giving our attendees an inside peek of exactly what to expect from each channel. Let’s take a closer look at what is to come from the network-telco mini channel at AnsibleFest 2020.
Network-Telco Automation at AnsibleFest
Telecommunication service providers have extremely critical and complex workflows that require specialized attention for automation. The network is no longer isolated to the data center, but extends to the enterprise and now the edge, each that have specific requirements.
This is the first time Telco as an industry or use case has been specifically highlighted as part of its own channel at AnsibleFest. Data center automation has long been a use case for Ansible automation, but as Telco workloads are moving to the edge, so does the need to automate the enterprise, branch-office and entry points for end-users.
Attendees can expect to hear about targeted use cases for Telecommunications Continue reading
Automation Architect Channel at AnsibleFest 2020
As we continue to expand all the insightful content that our attendees can expect from AnsibleFest 2020, we are excited to share with you our Automation Architect channel. Here is a sneak peek of exactly what to expect from the Automation Architect channel at AnsibleFest 2020.
Automation Architect Channel
Automation has become a key discipline in large IT organizations, but introducing automation to new areas is likely going to invoke technical and non-technical challenges. As organizations focus on building end-to-end automation solutions and increasing the automation footprint, Automation Architects will play a pivotal role as the interface with both technologists and business owners.
In this track, you will learn more about Ansible best practices for building your organization’s automation architecture, how to best collaborate with the business it serves and how it can help in broader corporate initiatives, such as your cloud journey. Whether you are an Enterprise or Automation Architect today or are interested in developing the skills for this career path, you will learn the best practices to successfully implement an automation initiative at scale.
Understand how you can use and share automation assets and how customers automate across hybrid, scalable infrastructures. Learn about integrating Continue reading
Network Automation at AnsibleFest 2020
This year, we are adapting our signature automation event, AnsibleFest, into a free virtual experience to connect our communities with a wider audience and to collaborate to solve problems. Seasoned pros and brand new Ansiblings alike can find answers and guidance for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, the enterprise solution for building and operating automation at scale. We’re giving our attendees an inside peek into exactly what to expect from each channel. Let’s take a closer look at what is to come from the network channel at AnsibleFest 2020.
Network Automation at AnsibleFest
Gone are the days of hand-typing commands into network devices one by one. Manage your network infrastructure using Ansible throughout the entire development and production life cycle. This AnsibleFest channel focuses on network automation topics for module and Collection developers to playbook writers, and is geared towards network and cloud engineers/operators. The channel has a good mix of community, customers, partners and Red Hatters that aims to provide something for everyone.
Attendees will learn how network automation can no longer be a “point tool”, but instead part of a holistic automation strategy that spans IT teams. Although Ansible was built as a DIY tool, it needs Continue reading