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 the sum greater than its parts and delivering quantifiable ROI. AAP’s flexibility and scalability are proven daily through its deep relationships with leading Ansible ecosystem OEMs such as ServiceNow, Dynatrace, and F5. These integrations not only enhance your IT efficiencies but also streamline your workflows, enabling collaborative automation across diverse environments. By leveraging Ansible’s capabilities, organizations can synchronize services, optimize performance monitoring, and manage network traffic more effectively, all within a unified platform. Additionally, AAP’s support for Event Driven Ansible (EDA) is a terrific example of its extensibility. Recent announcements at Red Hat Summit 2024, including Policy as Code, should help us all understand Red Hat’s vision for AAP going forward, making it more valuable than ever for enterprises that require the very best automation experience for their technical teams.
ServiceNow
ServiceNow’s integration with AAP creates a powerful nexus between service management and automation, enhancing IT operations across organizations. This integration allows users to leverage Ansible’s automation capabilities directly from the ServiceNow interface, enabling automated processes like configuration management, application deployment, and complex multi-tier workflows. By connecting ServiceNow’s extensive IT Service Management (ITSM) framework with Ansible’s robust automation tools, enterprises can streamline service requests, incident management, and change processes, reducing manual workloads and improving response times.
The integration between ServiceNow and AAP particularly shines in its ability to manage and automate infrastructure at scale. For instance, when an IT incident is reported in ServiceNow, Ansible can automatically execute remediation playbooks to resolve the issue, thereby decreasing downtime and enhancing system reliability. Additionally, this integration supports compliance and governance (more on this below) by maintaining detailed logs of changes and automations, ensuring that all actions are traceable and in line with company policies. This combination not only boosts operational efficiency but also fortifies an organization’s IT landscape against inconsistencies and potential vulnerabilities.
Dynatrace
Dynatrace’s integration with AAP brings together advanced monitoring capabilities with robust automation tools, enhancing the operational intelligence of IT environments. Dynatrace provides real-time monitoring and performance analytics across applications, clouds, and infrastructure. When integrated with AAP EDA, Dynatrace’s insights can trigger Ansible playbooks automatically, enabling proactive management of IT operations. This integration allows organizations to automatically scale or adjust their IT resources based on performance metrics, ensuring optimal performance and resource utilization.
The synergy between Dynatrace and Ansible AAP shows how automation can be driven by AI-powered analytics. For example, Dynatrace can detect anomalies or performance degradations and immediately trigger an Ansible playbook to remediate the issue without human intervention. This not only speeds up response times but also enhances the reliability of IT services by minimizing downtime and potential disruptions. Furthermore, the integration supports continuous improvement in IT operations by providing actionable insights and automating routine maintenance tasks, thereby freeing up IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.
F5
Even among dozens of network vendors with Ansible Certified Collections, the integration of F5 with AAP is still worth highlighting, as it underscores a genuinely strategic alignment that optimizes network operations and security within diverse IT environments. F5’s advanced load balancing and security solutions, when combined with Ansible’s automation capabilities, facilitate the management and deployment of network services. The partnership enables organizations to automate the configuration and management of F5 BIG-IP appliances, enhancing the consistency and efficiency of network operations. Via Ansible playbooks, network admins can automate tasks such as updating configurations, managing traffic loads, and applying security policies across multiple devices, all from a centralized platform.
This integration not only boosts operational agility but also enhances security measures. By automating the deployment of F5 security policies with Ansible, enterprises can swiftly adapt to changing security landscapes and mitigate potential threats. For instance, in response to emerging security vulnerabilities, Ansible can automate the rollout of updated security configurations across all F5 devices, ensuring rapid enforcement of security standards. Additionally, the combination of F5’s detailed network insights and Ansible’s automation workflows allows for proactive network management, reducing downtime and improving the overall resilience of IT infrastructure.
EDA
Event Driven Ansible within AAP is a transformative approach that enhances automation by reacting in real-time to events across the IT landscape. This feature enables the automation platform to trigger Ansible playbooks based on specific events, such as system alerts, performance anomalies, or security threats, effectively allowing IT systems to self-heal and adapt without manual intervention. By integrating with various event sources and leveraging a rules engine to evaluate and respond to events, Event Driven Ansible provides a proactive method to manage and resolve issues automatically. This capability not only streamlines operational workflows but also significantly reduces the time and effort required for issue resolution, thereby improving overall IT efficiency and reliability.
Policy as Code
Announced at Red Hat Summit 2024, Policy as Code signals a strategic move towards embedding compliance and security policies directly into AAP. Organizations will soon be able to enforce consistent standards and meet regulatory requirements across their IT environments automatically. Red Hat aims to ensure that every AAP deployment, configuration change, or operational task not only aligns with corporate policies but also adapts dynamically to evolving compliance landscapes. This approach will significantly streamline compliance processes, reduce the risk of violations, and enhance overall security posture, providing enterprises with a more resilient and compliant automation framework.