Red Hat Ansible Automation: Engine, Tower or Both

Red Hat Ansible Automation

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran of Ansible, or just starting out, the following blog provides experts and newbies with an update to the Red Hat Ansible Automation portfolio of products from Red Hat. You may have seen the official press release, and this blog hopes to answer some of the questions you still have.

Built on open source, backed by Red Hat

The Ansible project is one of the most popular open source projects, with almost 3,000 contributors in just over five years of existence. The Ansible project has always been an important part of the Ansible Tower “built-for-enterprise” story, but over the past few years a pattern has begun to emerge.

The Ansible project has grown over time, moving from just managing Linux servers to managing different types of devices: servers, virtual machines, containers, networking hardware, Windows platforms… even smart light bulbs. With the breadth of abilities to automate highly heterogeneous environments we received more requests for additional Red Hat offerings for diverse automation use cases. Red Hat Ansible Engine is now available for individuals and small teams to receive support for their Ansible environment, even if they do not need enterprise scalability via Ansible Tower.

Deep Dive: Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.2

Red Hat Ansible Tower

We are excited to announce the release of Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.2 for availability soon. Our engineering team has been working hard to enable Ansible Tower to provide the best platform for managing, executing, and delegating your Ansible automation throughout your entire enterprise, whether you’re managing servers, applications, networks, and more.

With Ansible Tower 3.2, we’re continuing to innovate in two main areas:

  • making automation more powerful and more flexible
  • enabling continued enterprise-wide deployment of automation

To do that, we’ve enhanced several areas of Ansible Tower, and I’m happy to talk about them today.

Enhanced Integration with Red Hat Insights

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With Ansible Tower 3.1, we built the first step of our integration with Red Hat Insights - allowing you to sync Insights remediation playbooks to Ansible Tower for use as needed. We’ve continued to enhance this integration in Ansible Tower 3.2. Now, we bring the ability to view Insights Actions directly in Ansible Tower. With this, you can more easily see your minor, major, and critical issues, and with just a few clicks, schedule remediation with Insights Plans.

Built-in Fact Caching

Ansible facts give you powerful capabilities to adjust, branch, and conditionalize playbook execution Continue reading

Space-radiated cooling cuts power use 21%

Using the sky as a free heat sink could be a solution to an impending energy crunch caused by increased data use. More data generated in the future will require evermore electricity-intensive cooling — the data centers will be getting bigger.Researchers at Stanford University think they have a solution to cooling creep. They say the way to reel in the cost of getting buildings cold enough for all the servers is to augment land-based air conditioning by sending excess heat into space and chilling it there.+ Also on Network World: 9 tips to turn your data center green + The scientists say cost savings will be in the order of 21 percent through a system they’ve been working on, and up to 70 percent, theoretically, by combining the kit with other, newer radiant systems, according to an article in IEEE Spectrum this week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Space-radiated cooling cuts power use 21%

Using the sky as a free heat sink could be a solution to an impending energy crunch caused by increased data use. More data generated in the future will require evermore electricity-intensive cooling — the data centers will be getting bigger.Researchers at Stanford University think they have a solution to cooling creep. They say the way to reel in the cost of getting buildings cold enough for all the servers is to augment land-based air conditioning by sending excess heat into space and chilling it there.+ Also on Network World: 9 tips to turn your data center green + The scientists say cost savings will be in the order of 21 percent through a system they’ve been working on, and up to 70 percent, theoretically, by combining the kit with other, newer radiant systems, according to an article in IEEE Spectrum this week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ISOC Togo Chapter Calls On Togo Government to Restore Internet Access

Today our Internet Society chapter in Togo issued a statement (in French) calling on the government of Togo to restore Internet access. Reports in the media and from our own members there indicate that that the government has shut down Internet access in the wake of protests after their recent election. The president of our ISOC Togo Chapter alerted us today that the shutdown has now even extended to SMS text messages.

As Dawit Bekele, our Africa Regional Bureau Director, recently wrote, we do not believe Internet shutdowns are the solution for governments in Africa or anywhere in the world. In today’s connected world, network restrictions have wide-ranging economic and social consequences for all people.

We join with our chapters in calling on governments to end Internet shutdowns.

Please share our Togo chapter’s statement widely on social media – and help spread the word that we need to #KeepItOn

 

Update: Norbert Glakpe, the president / chair of the ISOC Togo Chapter, was interviewed on RFI Afrique this morning. His audio can be heard at the end of this article: Au Togo, nouvelle journée de mobilisation à l’appel de l’opposition


Read more:

IDG Contributor Network: What is Dedicated Internet Access?

Question: Remote users, IPsec VPN’s to other sites, Remote Desktop, VoIP, Cloud Apps… What do they all have in common?“Reasons why I keep Tums in my drawer?” … No.Answer: These are data center applications which might require your company to need a Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) circuit, instead of the average, cost-effective business Internet access types, like Fios, U-verse, business-class cable, and DSL.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What is Dedicated Internet Access?

Question: Remote users, IPsec VPN’s to other sites, Remote Desktop, VoIP, Cloud Apps… What do they all have in common?“Reasons why I keep Tums in my drawer?” … No.Answer: These are data center applications which might require your company to need a Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) circuit, instead of the average, cost-effective business Internet access types, like Fios, U-verse, business-class cable, and DSL.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell EMC flexes some HCI muscle at VMworld 2017

In the world of technology, August is normally a fairly quiet month, and overall it was—but not in the realm of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).Around mid-August, Cisco finally announced the long overdue acquisition of Springpath, indicating it sees a strong potential upside in this market. Also in August, VMware held its annual user event, VMworld, and at the event it and its closest technology partner, Dell EMC, made a significant amount of news in the area of HCI. Historically, HCI has been used for desktop virtualization, but recently the uses cases have expanded into other business critical areas. And last week, Dell EMC and VMware announced new joint solutions. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell EMC flexes some HCI muscle at VMworld 2017

In the world of technology, August is normally a fairly quiet month, and overall it was—but not in the realm of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).Around mid-August, Cisco finally announced the long overdue acquisition of Springpath, indicating it sees a strong potential upside in this market. Also in August, VMware held its annual user event, VMworld, and at the event it and its closest technology partner, Dell EMC, made a significant amount of news in the area of HCI. Historically, HCI has been used for desktop virtualization, but recently the uses cases have expanded into other business critical areas. And last week, Dell EMC and VMware announced new joint solutions. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fixing, upgrading and patching IoT devices can be a real nightmare

Ensuring cybersecurity for computers and mobile phones is a huge, complex business. The ever-widening scope and unbelievable variety of threats makes keeping these devices safe from cyber criminals and malware a full-time challenge for companies, governments and individuals around the world.But at least the vast majority of those devices are easily accessible, safe in the pockets or sitting on the desktops of the very people who want to protect them. The Internet of Things (IoT) devices that need protection, on the other hand, could be almost anywhere: sitting in a remote desert, buried deep in coal mine, built into a giant truck. Or, even implanted inside the human body.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Microsoft Azure IoT Suite

The Internet of Things – a vast network of connected microdevices, sensors, and small computers generating vast amounts of data – is all around us. In fact, it's hard to find an industry that remains untouched by IoT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Fixing, upgrading and patching IoT devices can be a real nightmare

Ensuring cybersecurity for computers and mobile phones is a huge, complex business. The ever-widening scope and unbelievable variety of threats makes keeping these devices safe from cyber criminals and malware a full-time challenge for companies, governments and individuals around the world.But at least the vast majority of those devices are easily accessible, safe in the pockets or sitting on the desktops of the very people who want to protect them. The Internet of Things (IoT) devices that need protection, on the other hand, could be almost anywhere: sitting in a remote desert, buried deep in coal mine, built into a giant truck. Or, even implanted inside the human body.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Secure Multi-Tenancy at Scale with Docker Enterprise Edition

With the latest release of Docker Enterprise Edition (EE), enterprise organizations are able to extend the benefits of containers across their entire application portfolio. Docker EE enables rapid modernization of traditional Windows and Linux applications as well as Linux applications running on IBM Z mainframes. By addressing all of these applications, Docker EE provides the opportunity to standardize around a common packaging format for greater portability, agility, and with an additional layer of security, resulting in more teams bringing their workloads into Docker EE.

The key to operating this diverse environment is to have a way to secure and isolate the applications and the multiple teams who build, ship, and deploy them. This release of Docker Enterprise Edition makes it possible for organizations to modernize traditional applications of every variety and to do so in a secure manner that aligns to complex organizational needs.

Building a Secure Software Supply Chain for Windows Applications

 

Windows applications make up about half of all enterprise applications. Docker has been working closely with Microsoft to ensure that the same security benefits that are available to Linux containers are also available to Windows Server containers. When Windows containers are managed with Docker EE, organizations Continue reading