Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.3 is generally available (GA). It is a simple, agentless automation platform that improves your current processes, migrates apps for better optimization, and provides a single language for DevOps practices across your organization. This article describes the new features of Ansible Automation Platform 2.3.
1. A more secure trusted automation supply chain
As your automation grows, so does the amount of content required to run it. The Ansible Automation Platform 2.3 has been designed to help you enable a trusted software supply chain for your automation content that is more secure from end to end. The Ansible Automation Platform 2.3 has new security-focused features, tooling, and content, including:
- Ansible-sign tool: This new tool enables automation controller project signing. Projects are logical arrangements of Ansible Playbooks, represented in the Ansible automation controller. The signing of projects adds additional checks for playbooks held in source control.
- Sign and validate Ansible content via a WebUI: The signing of collections and execution environments was first released as a technology preview in Ansible Automation Platform 2.2 utilizing the command line. Now, the private automation hub allows administrators to sign collections and execution environments directly from the WebUI and validate signed content, simplifying content control.
- Profile support in Ansible Lint: This allows linting rulesets to be changed depending on the environment. Ansible Lint is fully supported in Ansible Automation Platform 2.3 after its inclusion in the Ansible Automation Platform 2.2 technology preview. Ansible Lint provides support for teams striving to write cleaner Ansible Playbook YAML and follow recommended coding practices.
- Validated content: We are also excited to introduce Ansible validated content, which complements the existing ecosystem of the Ansible community and Ansible certified content. Validated content provides opinionated Ansible roles to help your teams automate faster by utilizing a trusted, expert-led path for performing day-2 operational tasks against public clouds, networks, and even the Ansible Automation Platform itself. Initially, Ansible validated content collections will be pre-loaded into a private automation hub.
2. Simpler infrastructure
Ansible Automation Platform 2.3 offers an automation management experience with more simplicity, accessibility, and choice. The simplified infrastructure and management plane will lower the barriers to automation content creation entry and allow your teams to onboard new platforms quickly without waiting for an Ansible content collection build.
Additional improvements:
- Direct LDAP support with RBAC: Private automation hub can now directly integrate with your LDAP system and provide role-based access controls (RBAC).
- Platform Installer enhancements: These enhancements handle fapolicyd and simplify day zero by bundling an ansible-builder image with certified collections and an option to uninstall.
- Ansible Automation Platform Operator for Day 2 operations: Configure, update, and maintain Ansible Automation Platform components.
3. Improved automation scalability
A containerized architecture, paired with the automation controller and automation mesh components, anchors Ansible Automation Platform 2’s core mission - to help you “create, manage, and scale” your automation in entirely new ways.
Key platform component updates in the latest release include the automation controller, which continues to evolve. Now the controller meshed with sub-components activates and completes actions on behalf of the primary controller. This allows you to simplify execution node deployments and accelerate automation adoption. It also increases resiliency by running automation workloads closer to their endpoints.
4. Enhanced automation mesh features
New automation mesh features in the tech preview for the 2.3 release include the following:
- Simplified the adding and removing of execution node capacity. We have removed the requirements for using the platform installer to add or remove execution nodes.
- Enhancements for job utilization on multiple execution nodes. A more efficient task manager makes for more efficient use of execution nodes and increases your automation capacity.
- Support for external execution nodes. Automation mesh now allows you to connect external execution nodes to your Red Hat OpenShift Ansible Automation Platform installation. This new feature provides you more flexibility and agility to deliver automation across the hybrid cloud, including physical, virtual, cloud, and the edge.
5. Developer preview of Event-Driven Ansible
Several new Event-Driven Ansible capabilities have also been released as a Developer Preview from Red Hat. This component is not supported by Red Hat, is not included as part of the bundled installer, and must be installed separately per the upstream documentation. The Event-Driven Ansible is a scalable, responsive automation capability that processes events containing discrete, actionable intelligence. It will empower teams to determine the appropriate response to an event and execute automated actions to address or remediate it.
Event-Driven Ansible will free teams from mundane tasks to focus on innovation while enabling more responsive and resilient IT services through the faster resolution of requests.
New features in the developer preview include:
- A rules language and file structure for defining a relationship between events and actions.
- A fully integrated RESTful API to automate automation jobs and workflows.
- Integrated webhook support with GitHub and GitLab to provide automation into existing GitOps workflows.
You can find more details about event-driven automation here.
Make the move to Ansible Automation Platform 2.3
You can download the latest version of the Ansible Automation Platform from our website at no cost. Ansible Automation Platform is also available as a managed offering on Microsoft Azure and as a self-managed offering on AWS. Get started with the Ansible Automation Platform by exploring interactive labs.
