Five Things We Were Reminded About Red Hat® Satellite® During a Recent Client Engagement For many organizations, Red Hat Satellite enters the conversation as a repository and RHEL patch management platform. That's understandable because those are often the first problems Satellite gets asked to solv
Lessons from Modernizing Highly-Regulated Clients with Red Hat® Ansible Automation Platform® and Satellite® In Level Up's experience, enterprise automation projects rarely stall because of Ansible or any similar technology solution. Instead, many are delayed because organizations must first understa
Level Up is excited to announce that we are sharing our internal Red Hat® certification study methodology with customers in a no-additional-cost, limited-spot, accelerated "study club" format. Since the Level Up Learning Club typically follows Red Hat Learning Subscription (RHLS)-based courses and c
Level Up Workshop: AI-Driven Ansible® Automation – November 6th Join Red Hat Premier Partner and Infrastructure Automation experts Level Up virtually for a hands-on workshop where you’ll build an intelligent, self-healing automation workflow powered by Red Hat® AI and Ansible®. You’ll learn how to d
Level Up Workshop: Automate Linux with Red Hat® Ansible Automation Platform – September 23rd Join us virtually Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern for this Red Hat® and Premier Partner Level Up co-presented workshop, where you’ll be guided through configuring Red Hat Ansible®
As Chief Architect of a Red Hat Premier Partner which is deeply specialized in all things infra automation, one of the first things I often see people being surprised about when they're new to Red Hat Ansible, is how much its core design truly is "addition by subtraction". Meaning: Ansible is agentl
For years and across a number of client projects now, Red Hat® Premier Partner Level Up has been using an internal tool to quick-start client proof of concept (POC) evaluations of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform® (AAP). Adopting this has already saved not only our clients, but also our own team,
The scenario is: You want the simplicity and low infrastructure cost of deploying Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) 2.5 containerized on a single VM (aka the "container growth topology"). But you also need to be able to run remote execution nodes, perhaps in far away data centers. In such a
While Red Hat® Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)® can certainly handle your Day 1 cloud native provisioning tasks end to end, sometimes you just want Terraform® to hand off a server it just built to AAP, maybe to do something like register the host in an inventory and then run an AAP job template, w
If you've been doing DevOps for a while already, when it comes to security for cloud native apps, you've surely heard it all by now: “Security is everyone’s responsibility.” “Bake security into your source code, don't bolt it on after.” “Shift left.” These DevSecOps slogans all sound great, but turn
If you're using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP), chances are your automation estate isn’t static. Teams grow. Infrastructure expands. Workloads shift across clouds and datacenters. Often, AAP customers can benefit from the convenience of simply applying their username/password in the Setti
The Level Up team saw a question recently around how to reverse-engineer an Ansible playbook, in order to try to validate it and then modify it for one's own purposes. Upfront, we'd generally recommend a good-better-best approach to unraveling anybody else's Ansible code (much of this can be applied
Level Up is proud to have been featured recently in a Red Hat® partner case study, which showcases some of our customer project experience supporting cloud offerings such as Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) on AWS. As highlighted: "Level Up, a Red Hat Premier partner, provided Red Hat Ansib
Since a number of our customers have had questions for us about the recent announcements around AWX [https://www.ansible.com/blog/upcoming-changes-to-the-awx-project/], we wanted to share our views on the current/future state of the AWX project as of Q4 2024, and make sure that everyone is making a
An early milestone for an Ansible developer is when you first begin mixing your traditional playbooks with roles. As you'll see in this post, one of the most effective ways to get the many benefits of roles, without sacrificing the straightforwardness of your playbooks– especially in terms of being
Tuesday 11/19: Level Up Workshop: Automate Windows with Red Hat® Ansible Automation Platform (4 hours) Register now: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/qcyVIAO/levelupansible20241119 Join us virtually Tuesday, November 19th, 2024 at 1pm Eastern Time for this Red Hat® and Premier Partner Level Up
Who among us hasn't ever needed to download a larger file like an ISO or tarball onto their laptop via a browser, just to upload it via scp or WinSCP to a server somewhere far, far away– all because of the source website's authentication requirements? Even in our modern world of multi-gigabit home I
Overview In today's fast-paced digital landscape, agility and efficiency are paramount. While made available to customers as separate solutions, Red Hat OpenShift and Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) can fully combine forces to redefine how IT operations and development teams collaborate, innovate,
As fantastic as Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) is by itself, many customer success stories actually begin with third-party integrations and other extensions. After all, the opportunities that AAP creates for your organization have a lot to do with connecting various elements, thus making
Pro Tips for Using Ansible Builder v3 Note: This post was updated by the Level Up team on 8/9/2024. Hey there! If you're looking to truly star in the Ansible game, we need to talk about Ansible Builder v3. This powerhouse CLI tool is your gateway to creating custom execution environment images, whic
Tuesday 5/21: Level Up Workshop: Automate Windows with Red Hat® Ansible Automation Platform (4 hours) Register now: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/8Sq5fY6/levelupworkshop20240521 Join us virtually Tuesday, May 21st, 2024 at 1pm Eastern Time for this Red Hat® and Premier Partner Level Up co-p
Intro When it comes to infrastructure automation, Ansible stands out as one of the most popular and powerful tools today. At the heart of Ansible's automation capabilities are its modules, which serve as the primary building blocks for defining tasks and actions in your Ansible playbooks and roles.
As with just about all things Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)'s installation pretty much starts with prepping an inventory file. Super helpfully, the AAP installation is itself based on Ansible (which makes both hurdling any troubles encountered during install, as well as performi
How can you plan an effective, secure, compliant IT strategy across your varied IT stacks? This no-cost workshop, which is presented by Red Hat® award-winning Premier Partner Level Up, guides you through configuring Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform controller to connect to Windows Server inst
Are you over deploying manually config files that change from one environment to another? Done with managing seemingly-random parameters via those old-school, cryptic, regular expressions? Well then, welcome to a no-worries future where the Ansible template module is always here for you, no matter w
In the next five minutes, you're going to become an instant expert at using the ansible.builtin.copy module (one of the first ten Ansible modules you should know) to manage static Linux files. After this, you'll know how to transfer these files from your version control repo (so you don't have to wo
Here's a 5-minute tutorial on the Ansible command module, which Level Up considers one of the first 10 Ansible modules you should know. We also explain how command compares and contrasts with the related shell and raw modules. What is the Ansible Command Module? As its name would suggest, the comman
Below might be the quickest Ansible Navigator tutorial going (for the tutorial itself, you should feel totally free to jump right to the "Steps"), that with even a tiny bit of practice should make you blazingly-fast in developing and testing your Ansible playbooks and roles on the command line, even
Upfront, Red Hat Insights transforms the way organizations can manage their RHEL infrastructure, and it's available free as a part of your active RHEL subscription. With unique visibility, predictive analytics, and especially when integrated with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP), Red Hat In
Overview Hey everybody, it's April and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) execution environment (EE) images are (at least kind of) on the move! The way Red Hat serves filesystem blobs for all of its container images, including the must-have Red Hat-provided Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) e
The Ansible file module manages files and file properties on Linux hosts. You can use it to create, delete, and modify files, as well as set permissions– it even works with symlinks. This module is also regularly used in combination with modules like Ansible's copy and template to transfer files fro
Who is this workshop best for? This instructor-led workshop is intended for people who want to learn the basics of Ansible® Automation including Ansible Tower to automate Windows environments. This hands-on workshop details utilizing Windows modules with Ansible Playbooks, authoring playbooks using
Who is this workshop best for? This workshop guides you through configuring Ansible® automation controller to connect to Windows Server instances for automating various operational tasks. Once Ansible automation controller is configured, you will start with automating simple tasks and then progress
Join the Red Hat® and Level Up webinar where you will learn how to migrate your (soon to be retired) System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) client systems to Red Hat’s Ansible® Automation Platform (AAP). This migration will allow your automation to go faster, which will help you to get more done
This week, Level Up was excited to co-lead a virtual Ansible® Security Automation workshop, alongside Christopher Hindman, Partner Ecosystem Solutions Architect at Red Hat®. Why use Ansible for Security and Compliance Automation? Because it's a simple yet powerful way to automate IT– especially when
Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible® and Red Hat® Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and challenges for today’s public sector organizations. At this session, you’ll go from writing your first Ans
Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible® and Red Hat® Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and challenges for today’s public sector organizations. At this session, you’ll go from writing your first Ans
Overview Configuration Management is one of several well-defined infrastructure automation use cases which is ideally suited for Ansible. And "The Ansible Tower ® Difference with Configuration Management" is a solution demo playlist by Red Hat award-winning partner Level Up. Ad Hoc Commands Ansible
Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible® and Red Hat® Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and challenges for today’s public sector organizations. At this session, you’ll go from writing your first Ans
Please join LA DevOps and Cloud meetup co-sponsors Level Up and Red Hat ® for a Windows Automation with Red Hat Ansible ® Automation Platform Workshop on 8/19 starting at 2pm Pacific. REGISTER Windows Automation with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Workshop, Co-presented by Level Up, Red Hat, an
Overview As a quick intro on Red Hat® Ansible Automation Platform... here are some notable recent industry reports: State of the Cloud Report 2019: Ansible breaks out as the leader… …And according to Forrester Wave Q3 2020, Red Hat is the only “leader” 100% based on open source. Also, take a look at
REGISTER Ansible 101 Workshop, Presented by Level Up, June 17th, 10am – 3pm PST Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible® and Red Hat® Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and challenges for today's publ
REGISTER Ansible 101 Workshop, Presented by Level Up, May 18th, 10am – 3pm PST Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible® and Red Hat® Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and challenges for today's publi
Windows updates are as easy to automate with Ansible Tower as... well, everything else on Windows. Check out the 3-minute video above to see what we mean! Main demo playbook code: And you can download a free, 60-day evaluation of Ansible Tower via Red Hat’s site today: https://www.redhat.com/en/tech
Windows service management is a building block on the road to automating everything, and a key Ansible by Red Hat #WindowsAutomation use case. Check out this (4-minute) demo video to see it in action! Main demo playbook code: stopservice.yml: startservice.yml: And you can download a free, 60-day eva
Why try to manage your Windows and Linux software packages via completely different systems... when you can just use Red Hat Ansible Tower instead? For more info, check out: https://levelupla.io/red-hat/ SUBSCRIBE to get more info on all things infrastructure automation! https://www.youtube.com/chan
"Ansible 101 Best Practices", part of the Ansible Workshop Series, presented by Level Up. In the real world... we have to be able to do things like protect passwords, test dry runs of our changes prior to rolling them out widely, and maintain consistent team coding standards. This video includes liv
REGISTER Ansible 101 Workshop for Mid-Market Companies, Presented by Level Up, March 2nd, 10am – 3pm PST Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible and Red Hat Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and chal
"Ansible Roles", part of the Ansible Workshop 101 Series, presented by Level Up. This video includes a live demo showing how you can develop your first Ansible role, which then allows you to easily share your solutions with your colleagues and other users. Key concepts discussed here: 1. Code Reuse
Because "infrastructure as code" means it's "code" after all, working effectively with variables is going to be a core competency on your journey to mastering Red Hat's Ansible. For its part, Ansible gives you quite a bit of flexibility in terms of how you can inject, update, and even register new v
"Ansible 101 Playbooks", part of the Ansible Workshop Series, presented by Level Up. This video includes live demos showing how you can write playbooks to start automating your organization's configuration management and application deployment tasks. Examples include: 1. First playbook: Verifying Ap
Like all code, your infrastructure code has a certain grammar. When discussing Ansible in grammatical terms, the inventory is really the first noun you have to know (after all, nothing ever runs without defining some host(s) for Ansible to run it on). Along those same grammar lines, modules are basi
"Ansible 101 Ad-Hoc Commands", part of the Ansible Workshop Series, presented by Level Up. This video includes live demos showing how you can start using Ansible immediately in your own environment, without necessarily even having to write your own playbooks (or use anyone else's). Examples include:
Windows Automation is a key use case for Red Hat Ansible Tower, which makes routine tasks like managing local users straightforward, consistent, and FAST. Main demo playbook code: And you can download a free, 60-day evaluation of Ansible Tower via Red Hat's site today: https://www.redhat.com/en/tech
When it comes to installation and actually being able to start automating things… it simply doesn't get easier than Red Hat Ansible. Key questions we seek to answer here: What is Ansible? What is the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform? How do they compare? And how can you get started in using Ansib
REGISTER Automating Academia: Ansible 101 Workshop, Presented by Level Up, November 17th, 10am – 3pm PST Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible and Red Hat Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and chal
REGISTER Automating Government: Ansible 101 Workshop, Presented by Level Up, October 20th, 10am – 3pm PST Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible and Red Hat Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and cha
Last week, Level Up led an online Ansible 101 workshop, primarily focused on today's unique challenges and opportunities for the healthcare sector. Why Ansible? Because it's one of the fastest growing and already most popular infrastructure automation solutions, running on over 4 million nodes, with
Looking for a 5-minute demo of Red Hat Ansible Tower? Just named a Forrester Wave Infrastructure Automation Platform leader, Ansible is the only leader which is 100% based on open source. And you can download a free, 60-day evaluation of Ansible Tower today: https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/ma
REGISTER Ansible 101 Workshop, Presented by Level Up, September 23rd, 10am – 3pm PST Learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible and Red Hat Ansible Tower at our half-day, hands-on Ansible 101 technical workshop specifically focused on the unique opportunities and challenges for today's h
Level Up co-sponsored and co-presented at yesterday evening's virtual LA DevOps and Cloud meetup, alongside partner Red Hat and an awesome group of attendees from the health care industry and beyond. Red Hat Principal Solutions Architect Brad Hinson drove a live demo on "Automating Compliance", show
Along with your CDN, load balancers are a big part of the "first impression" user experience that's created whenever customers launch your apps. Doesn't that mean your developers should be front and center in making decisions about how they actually run? With Ansible for network automation, develope
Network devices... pretty much the final frontier of infrastructure code adoption. In Part 2 of our Network Automation overview playlist, we show how network teams can get off to a FAST start using Ansible. And if you’re looking to give the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform a spin in your own envi
Last updated: September 19, 2022 On the path to becoming cloud native, it’s often helpful to zoom out and look at some of the products we are using to actually put our ideas into practice, from the highest of levels. And being able to simply yet comprehensively describe key use cases for solutions l
Looking for a 5-min exec overview about why Red Hat Ansible is ideal for network automation in the cloud and in the datacenter? We've got you covered. And if you're looking to give the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform a spin in your own environment, you can download a 60-day trial from Red Hat's
Simplify Your Jira Change Management Processes Via Ansible Playbooks As part of the "Becoming Cloud Native with Red Hat Emerging Technologies" playlist, this video is one in a series on Automation topics, in which Red Hat systems integrator partner Level Up Technology LLC is highlighting important featu
Give Your Organization Greater Visibility Into Ansible Playbook Runs Via Slack As part of the "Becoming Cloud Native with Red Hat Emerging Technologies" playlist, this video is one in a series on Automation topics, in which Red Hat systems integrator partner Level Up Technology LLC is highlighting impor
Express Your Team’s Infrastructure Code Standards Using Custom ansible-lint Rules As part of the "Becoming Cloud Native with Red Hat Emerging Technologies" playlist, this video is one in a series on Automation topics, in which Red Hat systems integrator partner Level Up Technology LLC is highlighting im
Part 3 of 3 on "Becoming Cloud Native: What to do when your public sector organization WASN'T born in the cloud". In the third and final of a 3-video overview which is specifically focused on addressing the unique cloud and automation goals and challenges of state/local agencies as well as higher ed
What we mean when we say that Ansible is a declarative (rather than imperative) infrastructure automation framework, and why that's better for your organization on the road to becoming cloud native. As part of the "Becoming Cloud Native with Red Hat Emerging Technologies" playlist, this video is one
Part 1 of 3 on "Becoming Cloud Native: What to do when your public sector organization WASN'T born in the cloud". In the first of a 3-video overview which is specifically focused on addressing the unique cloud and automation goals and challenges of state/local agencies as well as higher education, R
A big way in which we typically measure success with DevOps has to do with integration. Your new solutions need to work with whatever products your organization has already made investments in. Because whether IT decision-makers were thinking in terms of infrastructure-as-code when they originally p
Coding style guides are becoming fairly common in larger organizations. (As examples at the deepest end of the pool, Google publishes guides for Python, Java, C++ and other languages.) Some coding style guides are more ambitious than others. Some are probably more reality-bound than others. We can d
As leaders, we are always striving to bring greater ownership/accountability to our organizations, and visibility to our internal customers. When it matters, the question of “Who did what and when?” matters more than ever. However, especially in larger microservices-based CI/CD environments, with an
Level Up was thrilled to be part of the Cloud Native Patterns meetup at the TrueCar Santa Monica offices on November 20th. There were over 50 RSVP’s, and we really enjoyed having a chance to connect with so many members of the new LA DevOps and Cloud meetup group. Meetup keynote speaker Regis Wilson