In a previous blog post, we discussed the benefits of automation when it comes to enabling teams and driving efficiency. In that post, we focused on “why” it makes sense to automate processes and how your organization can get started. Spoiler alert: it will save your organization valuable time and resources.

Now, let’s expand on this topic with a look at real use-case scenarios and explore how we can leverage Red Hat’s Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) solution to start your automation journey.

Ansible Automation Platform is a modular and scalable solution that allows enterprises to build, secure, and implement automation and code that can be reused and shared across business units. In simple terms, AAP allows you to achieve consistency when automating processes across your organization. This boosts productivity and reduces the time-to-completion for new automation projects.

While AAP is well suited to deploying infrastructure across any environment that has an API, it really shines in the initial set-up and on-going management of systems. Using a declarative approach to automation, it ensures underlying configurations remain in their intended state. It also gives you the flexibility to manage endpoints, such as Windows or Linux, directly from the Ansible Automation Platform or through a Central Management platform such as Red Hat Satellite.

In fact, Red Hat has invested heavily in building the Ansible Automation Platform for flexibility by adding many new features to expand its capabilities and integrations. Staying true to Red Hat’s mantra of “open source first,” organizations using AAP can take advantage of existing Roles, Modules, Collections, and Playbooks available from the community to kick-start and simplify their automation journey. Enterprises looking for a more secure and flexible approach can build their own execution environments (EEs), which offer a containerized solution for building and distributing automation environments. With EEs, you can execute automation from anywhere with the help of a defined, consistent, and portable environment.

Providing a centralized organizational hierarchy, Ansible Automation Platform enables consistency in automation sharing across teams and resources. With AAP, organizations have access to a common (automation) platform where they can share code (Playbooks), secure access control for different teams, and control repeatable job execution.

Ansible Automation Platform Key Highlights:

Centralized security for sensitive information: Out of the box, AAP comes with an encrypted credential store. Alternatively, integrations enable your organization to leverage existing KMS and secrets management systems to dynamically retrieve secrets on execution, securely.

Empower the help desk teams with automation: When troubleshooting systems issues, AAP simplifies the process by providing a common point for triaging and accessing real-time feedback. This common point of access gives technicians accurate visibility and leads to faster resolutions. Since AAP accesses APIs and systems, help desk technicians do not need to interface directly with system endpoints, hence credentials do not need to be distributed and managed or rotated for individuals.

Custom Execution Environments: AAP introduces an ultra-portable and reusable container-native approach that enables organizations to build consumable automation and execution environments (EE’s). Gone are the days of managing Linux Virtual Environments (VENV’s), specific Ansible versions, and libraries!

Automation Hub: Giving you a place to publish and download automation content, including execution environments and content collections, the automation hub gives enterprises a great deal of flexibility and choice. It can be deployed as a private repository on premises, in the cloud, or by leveraging the Red Hat cloud SaaS offering. Enterprises that already have a centralized and secure container registry can host all their Ansible EE container images there, leveraging the same RBAC and existing solution.

Ansible Analytics (Red Hat Insights for Ansible Automation Platform): Gain insight into all your Ansible Automation jobs, reports, monitoring and understand automation trends right from the Red Hat Cloud portal.

ServiceNow ITSM integration with AAP: Make Ansible part of your overall request and ticketing workflow. Request configuration updates and changes from Service Now and use Ansible as the tool to enact all changes once the ticket is approved. Take it one step further with the AAP inventory plugin with integration to your ServiceNow CMDB for dynamic retrieval of automation hosts. Check out the Certified Collection for ServiceNow ITSM to learn more about the power of AAP for service ticketing.

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Getting started:

Get started on your automation journey with MOBIA, Red Hat, and Ansible Automation Platform. Use your existing automation Playbooks or let us help you develop new ones and enable your team. Explore the Ansible Automation Platform hands-on labs from Red Hat.

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Contact us to learn more, inquiries@mobia.io

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