Hi friends,
Exciting news! The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 is now officially available, as of September 30, 2024! This latest release introduces a host of new features and improvements designed to streamline your automation workflows and enhance efficiency across your IT infrastructure.
1. Unified Web UI - A Major Enhancement
One of the most exciting changes in Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 is the unified web UI. If you’re familiar with Istio and Kubernetes, you’ll appreciate how this update aggregates all API calls under a single component. This redesign means that authentication, authorization, and role-based access control (RBAC) are now managed from one place, greatly simplifying user management. Whether you’re configuring controller, Automation Hub, or event-driven authentication, everything is centralized. This unified UI improves design and streamlines enterprise authentication, eliminating the need to replicate configurations across different components. This is a big step forward in making the platform easier to manage!
2. Automation Calculator – Optimize Your Automation Jobs
A new feature I’m particularly excited about is the Automation Calculator. This tool suggests ways to optimize your automation jobs and even offers insights into your ROI (Return on Investment) from using Ansible. It’s going to be fascinating to see how accurate the suggestions are in real-world scenarios, especially as we push for greater efficiency in our workflows.
3. Ansible Quick Starts – Perfect for Beginners
For those just getting started with Ansible, the Ansible Quick Starts feature is perfect. This new panel in the UI guides users step by step through various tasks, helping newcomers get up to speed quickly. It’s a fantastic tool for onboarding junior engineers or anyone new to the platform.
4. Ansible Lightspeed - Generative AI for Automation
Of course, it’s 2024, and generative AI is making its way into everything—including Ansible! With this release, we get Ansible Lightspeed, powered by IBM WatsonX Code Assistant. This AI-powered tool can generate entire playbooks from a simple text prompt, explain the logic behind existing playbooks, and refine prompts for maximum clarity and correctness. It’s going to be a real game-changer for automation developers, especially since it supports on-premise deployment in air-gapped environments. I can’t wait to dive into this feature.
5. Expanded Event-Driven Ansible Capabilities
Event-Driven Ansible is growing even more powerful in this release, with integrations for GitHub, GitLab, and ServiceNow right out of the box. This functionality makes it easier than ever to automatically trigger automation tasks based on real-time events, which is a massive win for keeping infrastructure agile and responsive.
6. Integrated Development Tools
For developers, there’s also the new Ansible Development Tools package, which bundles together several important utilities like Molecule, Linter, and Ansible Navigator. Now you can manage all your development tools under a single package, improving workflow and making content creation more efficient.
7. Credential Manager and SSO
Finally, Credential Manager has been integrated into the platform alongside RBAC and Single Sign-On (SSO). Managing credentials and access control just got much simpler with these improvements, thanks to the new web UI. This will help reduce human error and improve security across your automation environments.
Installation Options and Upgrades
Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 can be installed on-prem or in the cloud, with support for Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform. If you’re already using a previous version, an upgrade path from Ansible Automation Platform 2.4 will be available soon, allowing you to seamlessly transition to the new release.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that RPM-based installations will soon be decommissioned as the platform shifts towards container-based deployment. This transition aligns with Red Hat’s broader strategy, aiming to accelerate the release of new features and innovations.
Final Thoughts
This release is a huge leap forward for Ansible Automation Platform, combining new technologies like generative AI, integrated authentication, and an enhanced developer experience. I’m really excited to test these features in my lab and share my findings with you soon.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more deep dives into this release. As always, let’s keep automating more and innovating faster!
Cheers,
Luca Berton
Links
- Unlock your Automation Advantage with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 Release notes
Academy
Learn the Ansible automation technology with some real-life examples in my Udemy 300+ Lessons Video Course.
My book Ansible By Examples: 200+ Automation Examples For Linux and Windows System Administrator and DevOps
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