Red Hat

Ansible
Automation
Platform
A beginner’s guide
 Choose the right path for
your automation journey

Are you a newcomer Do you have some

to automation? experience in automation?
Start here and then jump into the chapters below Start here and then jump into the chapters below
totake you along your automation journey. totake you along your automation journey.

03 Introduction
03 Introduction

06 A brief look at Red Hat

Ansible Automation Platform 25 The benefits of Red Hat Ansible
Automation Platform partnerships

07 The business value of Red Hat

Ansible Automation Platform 27 Strategies for
automation adoption

11 A closer look at Red Hat

Ansible Automation Platform 31 Taking the next step

14 A single platform for your

entire automation team

20 Where to integrate automation

into your organization

30 How to get started

Introduction
IT automation is now
mission critical.

Modern enterprises struggle with overwhelming IT At an operational level, organizations deal with disconnected
complexity while under pressure to extract more return on teams, skill gaps, and a lack of consistent governance. At
investment (ROI) from existing technology investments. a technical level, IT departments manage too many tools
Spending their way out of the problem isn’t a solution. that do similar things, leading to solution sprawl and bloated
budgets. Instead of being focused on growth, scale, and
In order to be competitive and increase revenue, IT teams innovation, IT manages outdated manual processes.
need to bring more services to market faster, allowing IT teams
to be more productive and efficient, and maintain a focus Although many organizations dabble in automation, too
on the security and compliance of operating environments many approach it in a task-based way with point solutions
and systems—all with the same resources available to them. rather than taking a broader view. A task-based approach
can increase costs, result in duplicate efforts, require
expertise on multiple platforms, and build barriers between
functions and departments. Many companies strive to use
automation more strategically across their organizations,
and automating IT functions is key to their success. In
fact, 451 Research found the number of companies with
automated IT processes was expected to rise from 7%
of companies to 20% of companies within a year.1

While this is progress, many organizations have a long way

to go to achieve this. Promising technologies—such as
generative artificial intelligence (gen AI)—can’t fix a slow or
broken IT process or offset the inefficiencies from manual
provisioning and IT management tasks. Even with automation
in place, overworked IT teams still spend too much time on
Day 2 operations, such as system patching, service ticket
resolution, security issue remediation, and root cause analysis.

Automating strategically is the way to truly get ahead.

In order for organizations to participate in and benefit
from artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, they need
to have a strong automated IT operations foundation
in place, with an approach that is simultaneously
focused on technologies, processes, and people.

1
451 Research. “The impact of event-driven automation on IT operations,” 7 Oct. 2022.

3
 What should IT automation look like?

• Accessible across users, teams, and regions.

• Ability to respond with agility to evolving business needs.

• Optimized productivity and efficiency of IT teams.

• Faster IT service response times.

• Coordinated workflows across the IT environment, including

datacenter, clouds, operating system (OS), applications,
networking, IT service management (ITSM), security
systems, and edge devices.

• Adherence to internal governance policies and service-level

agreements (SLAs).

• Use of advanced event-driven automation techniques to

proactively prevent issues.

• Proactive remediation of security and compliance risks

across all aspects of IT.

The right automation solution can improve

“ Automation generates
substantial day-to-day
the way IT functions in your organization efficiencies … Development
while unifying teams and processes, and teams benefit from greatly
ultimately, transforming the way you reducing the friction
deliver IT. So what does it take to bring IT associated with provisioning
automation to your organization? and deploying the IT resources
they require. Employees
Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform is a flexible,
scalable, and comprehensive automation solution
benefit from higher-quality
that works across your IT environment and meets you applications that experience
where you are in your automation journey. With Ansible fewer outages.” 2
Automation Platform, automation is accessible, shareable,
and usable across teams and departments, with seamless Jevin Jensen, Research Vice President,
integration into your existing IT systems and platforms. Infrastructure and Operations, IDC

2
IDC Business Value White Paper, sponsored by Red Hat. “The Business Value of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.” Document #US51839824, March 2024.

4
With the addition of Event-Driven Ansible and the
AI-powered Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed with IBM
watsonx Code Assistant, your Ansible Automation
Platform investment extends even further.

Event-Driven Ansible:
This event-driven automation tool can help
your business maintain resilience, reliability,
and efficiency while working around resource
constraints and skills gaps.

Ansible Lightspeed with watsonx Use this e-book as your guide to

Code Assistant: Ansible Automation Platform, its
This gen AI tool can help your automation benefits, and information to help you
teams create, adopt, and maintain Ansible make the right decisions for your
content faster and more efficiently. organization’s automation practice.

If you have used Ansible

Automation Platform before If you’re brand new to Ansible
and want to learn about the benefits of Automation Platform
extending automation across your organization
keep reading to find out how automation can
or migrating from an earlier version to the
help your organization succeed.
latest offering, jump to A closer look at
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

Let’s get this journey started.

5
A brief look at
Red Hat Ansible
Automation Platform

To understand Ansible Automation Platform, you first need A vibrant and enthusiastic community of people contributes to
to understand Red Hat. For more than 25 years, Red Hat has and relies on the Ansible project, and they continue to extend
delivered open source solutions hardened for stability that help this technology into a more flexible and robust solution every
organizations work across platforms and environments and day, with upstream developers helping expand its ability to
address enterprise IT challenges. Red Hat has a long history support enterprise ecosystems.
of participating in open source community projects, and the
work around Ansible Automation Platform is no exception. Red Hat is evolving the platform to meet the ongoing
complexities of hybrid and multicloud computing and be flexible
enough to meet future challenges. At the same time, Red Hat is

60K stars 3 committed to helping the Ansible community to grow and thrive.

Ansible/Ansible

31.6K users 3

Ansible/Ansible
See how Ansible Automation Platform
helps organizations adopt a culture of
5,500+ contributors 3
collaborative automation.
Ansible/Ansible Watch the video.

70.5K followers 4

Red Hat Ansible X (formerly Twitter)

Find out how Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform can bring
tangible business benefits to your organization by reading
The business value of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

3
“GitHub - Ansible.” GitHub, accessed 2 Feb. 2024.
4
“X - Red Hat Ansible.” X, accessed 2 Feb. 2024.
6
The business value
of Red Hat Ansible
Automation Platform

Investments in automation are being prioritized across many

areas, according to Red Hat’s 2023 Global Tech Outlook.5
The report found 29% of respondents said IT operations
automation is a top IT technology funding priority over the next
year, up 1 percentage point from the previous year’s research.

Over the next 12 months, what are your company’s Why is automation gaining traction year
top IT technology funding priorities? (Select up to 3) over year?
IT security 44%

Cloud infrastructure There are a number of potential reasons, but among the
(public, private, hybrid, 36%
multicloud) biggest is the quantifiable business value of automation—and
IT / cloud management 35% particularly of Ansible Automation Platform.

Optimizing/ modernizing
existing or legacy IT 29% According to research from IDC, customers using Ansible
IT operations automation
Automation Platform to support business needs and to
29%
(e.g., Ansible, Puppet) improve IT and application development operations could see
Data services and storage
26%
a 3-year return on investment (ROI) of 668% with an 8-month
(hardware or software)
payback on investment.6
Analytic/ Business
intelligence (e.g., Data 23%
science, Big data)

Application development 22%

Enterprise integration
22%
(data, apps, APIs, etc.)
Want to find out more about how
Other
1%
to champion IT automation across
your organization?
Read the IT executive’s guide to automation.

5
Red Hat overview. “2023 Global Tech Outlook: A Red Hat report,” 15 Nov. 2022.
6
IDC Business Value White Paper, sponsored by Red Hat. “The Business Value of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.” Document #US51839824, March 2024.
7
Based on interviews with Ansible
Automation Platform users, the report
also found that organizations could
benefit from positive effects on:7

Reliability:

61% reduction in unplanned downtime.

27% more efficient IT security teams.

IT staff:

38% more efficient network infrastructure management teams.

36% more productive development teams.

DevOps efficiencies by activity:

38% improvement in provisioning.

34% improvement in configuring.
27% improvement in securing.

7
IDC Business Value White Paper, sponsored by Red Hat. “The Business Value of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.” Document #US51839824, March 2024.

8
Organizations around the globe, such as
Swisscom, Agile Defense, and Ulta Beauty,
are finding similar business benefits using
Ansible Automation Platform.

From improving efficiencies and delivering digital services

faster to freeing up critical resources to focus on higher-value
projects, these organizations are recognizing the advantage of
taking a holistic automation approach.

“
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
gives us a lot of flexibility and covers a lot
of different patterns. It also integrates
well with our other tools.” 8
Giancarlo Morena, Product Manager, Swisscom

“
We chose Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to
tackle this problem because it can communicate
with everything.” 9
Sara FitzGerald, PhD, Technical Writer, Agile Defense

“
The built-in capabilities of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provide
an accelerator in a box. It’s the de facto standard that many of our vendors
and partners also use to write scripts to install, configure, and maintain
their technology.” 10
Jesse Amerson, IT director, Ulta Beauty

8
Red Hat case study. “Swisscom gains efficiency by standardizing and expanding automation,” 6 Dec. 2023.
9
Red Hat case study. “Agile Defense simplifies security compliance with automation,” 22 Jan. 2024.
10
Red Hat case study. “Ulta Beauty Standardizes on Red Hat for Automation and Service Delivery Transformation,” Oct. 2022.
9
3 advantages of implementing Ansible
Automation Platform in your organization:

1 Greater efficiency:

Your staff can spend more time making a bigger impact on

your business. Leave the rote repetition to automation.

2 Better reliability:

When you reduce human intervention, you encounter fewer

oversights and issues because everything happens in the
same way—every time. Have confidence that you know
exactly when processes, tests, updates, workflows, and
other tasks are going to happen, how long they’ll take, and
that you can trust the outcomes.

3 Simplified governance:

Minimize the potential consequences of knowledge gaps.

With a holistic automation approach, you have better control
over your entire organization and an improved vantage point
over any missed steps, not to mention audit trails and other
information you need to easily align with compliance goals.

Learn more about the value of the

Ansible Automation Platform.
View video.

Now that we’ve looked at the benefits of using Ansible Automation Platform, it’s time
to explore how to access those benefits, including some of the top features of the
platform. Jump to A closer look at Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

10
A closer look at
Red Hat Ansible
Automation Platform
Whether you want to automate applications, networks,
containers, security, cloud infrastructure, or all of the
above, Ansible Automation Platform can help you create,
execute, and manage automation—all from a single place.

1
Ansible Automation Platform uses
playbooks in YAML format.

Ansible Playbooks are regularly used to automate administration

functions, such as orchestration, configuration, management,
and deployment. A playbook is written in the YAML syntax
and contains 1 or more plays, which are used to define a web
service or an application. YAML is human-readable and easy
to understand, and it can be used in conjunction with other
programming languages, such as Ruby, Python, or Bash.

Each play within a playbook can run 1 or more tasks, and each
task invokes an Ansible module, which are used to accomplish
automation tasks in Ansible Automation Platform.

Because Ansible Automation Platform uses the easy-to-use

YAML syntax—which comes in plain text, human-readable
language and benefits from source control management—users Want to learn more about YAML?
who don’t write programming language code can automate
Check out this topic page for
infrastructure with confidence. Note that Event-Driven Ansible
uses rulebooks instead of playbooks, also written in YAML, that more information.
contain conditional if-then rules to push the right user-defined
automated actions. These rulebooks are able to call existing
Ansible Playbooks, too.

11
2
Ansible Automation Platform
features gen AI.

Ansible Lightspeed with IBM watsonx Code Assistant is a

gen AI service designed to help individuals and teams create,
adopt, and maintain Ansible content with more ease and
3
Ansible Automation Platform
efficiency. With Ansible Lightspeed with IBM watsonx Code
Assistant, new automation content creators can learn faster is agentless.
while experienced developers can validate their code to
promote adherence to Ansible best practices.
Among the most powerful and unique features of Ansible
Automation Platform is the fact that it’s agentless, which
Connected to the IBM watsonx Code Assistant service, Ansible
means that you don’t need to install an agent on any
Lightspeed turns natural language prompts into recommended
machines you are trying to manage. This feature makes
code snippets—in the form of tasks that can be used as part of
Ansible Automation Platform extremely scalable, as it can
a playbook—while integrating directly into existing developer
rapidly manage multiple machines or systems simultaneously.
workflows, helping to bridge the gap between automation
ideas and Ansible content.

4
Ansible Automation Platform is
built for the hybrid cloud.

As hybrid and multicloud computing models continue to

expand, IT organizations need automation platforms that can
bridge from traditional systems to modern services to the far
edge of the network.

To make your automation projects highly portable and scalable,

Ansible Automation Platform includes automation execution
environments. Execution environments help create self-
contained automation that packages all dependencies needed
to build, run, and manage automation across hybrid and
multicloud infrastructure and to the edge of the network.

Whether you’re modernizing and moving workloads to

the cloud, implementing DevSecOps, or finding new ways
to manage a growing network of edge devices, Ansible
Automation Platform is able to fulfill diverse needs across
multiple processes. Ansible Automation Platform is now
available directly through several of the leading hyperscalers’
marketplaces, making it even simpler to start automating
across your cloud environments and efficiently integrate with
the cloud services you are already using.

12
5 6
Ansible Automation Platform has built-in Ansible Automation Platform includes
compliance and governance constructs. event-driven automation.

From role-based access controls (RBAC) that allow Event-driven automation is the next step in the journey to
administrators to assign permissions, privileges, and roles to end-to-end automation. It answers the need to connect
users to encryption, audit trails, and inventory controls, Ansible intelligence, analytics, and service requests for an IT
Automation Platform has the tools necessary to keep your environment to automated actions so that activities can take
organization compliant and aligned with SLAs. place in a single motion. This model is ideal for high-volume,
routine tasks and ITSM actions, along with responding to
changing IT conditions, and more.

Event-driven automation works by allowing for a predefined

and automated response when a certain type of event occurs.
For example, in a typical IT operation, a system outage can
send an alert that automatically triggers a specific action
like logging a trouble ticket, gathering the facts needed for
troubleshooting, or performing a task, such as a reboot—all
without manual steps. In a similar way, event-driven automation
can help teams respond to a variety of additional Day 2
operational needs, such as configuration management, edge
device management, provisioning, user management, tuning
and scalability, and more.

These are only a few of the features and

benefits that you can expect from Ansible
Automation Platform. Learn more about how
Ansible Automation Platform brings teams
and systems together.

If you have used Ansible Automation Platform before

and want to delve into what you can automate, jump to Where to integrate automation in your organization.

If you’re new to Ansible Automation Platform

move on to A single platform for your entire automation team.

13
A single platform
for your entire
automation team

Ansible Automation Platform is Breaking down barriers between systems and teams across the
organization, Ansible Automation Platform gives diversified
designed to help set up your entire teams the automation tools they need for their specific roles
automation team for success. while collaborating with a connected, supported, and security-
focused enterprise-wide solution.

Architects

Administrators
Developers

See how different members of your

automation team can benefit from
Operators using Ansible Automation Platform:

14
Automation platform engineers and developers

Automation developers need tools that can help them create tooling and plug-ins, access to pre-existing certified content to
Ansible Playbooks, Ansible Roles, and modules, and then test build from, and container-native architecture for both building
them locally to see if they run the same way when moved to and testing.
production. Automation developers can benefit from DevOps

The right tools for automation platform engineers and developers

Automation execution environments: Ansible content tools:

Automation execution environments provide automation The execution environment builder helps automation
developers with a consistent environment from developers build custom automation execution
development to production, which means developers can environments with the precise Ansible content and
focus on the automation content itself without worrying dependencies needed to support their automation.
about dependencies and drift between each stage. The automation content navigator lets users run and
validate the content they create within the context of
the execution environment itself.

Ansible development tools: Ansible Content Collections:

Ansible development tools are a suite of command-line Ansible content can be created and managed internally
features and other capabilities that help Ansible content for your organizations to use. However, curated content
creators confidently build, test, and deploy automation is also available from Red Hat through Ansible Content
content in the enterprise. Even less experienced users Collections. These collections provide developers with
can create test environments, analyze playbooks, deploy the option of building on curated automation content,
content inside execution environments, and more with which includes more than 100 certified collections and
these supported tools. more than 40,000 modules.

Ansible automation hub: Ansible Lightspeed with IBM watsonx

Code Assistant:
This hosted service is the place for users to find and
use supported Ansible Content Collections, which Ansible’s gen AI experience is designed to enhance the
contains modules, roles, and plug-ins, along with the Ansible playbook development process, bridging the
documentation you need to get started. gap between your automation ideas and the functional
YAML code you need to make Ansible Playbooks. You
can accelerate automation content creation and validate
the code you write with an AI model trained specifically
on Ansible best practices.

15
Automation architects

Tasked with streamlining automation adoption and elevating which offers flexibility when automation architects
automation across teams to align with IT processes, must plan for current and future needs. Additionally,
automation architects need tools that can not only expand automation architects benefit from Ansible Automation
automation across the organization but that can also help Platform’s agentless framework, along with the entire
to manage automation policy and governance. Ansible Ansible technology ecosystem, which integrates
Automation Platform provides container-native architecture, efficiently with existing IT investments.

The right tools for automation architects

Automation execution environments: Automation controller:

Automation execution environments represent a change Automation controller standardizes how automation is
in architecture for Ansible Automation Platform. By initiated, delegated, audited, and deployed, allowing
separating the control plane and the execution plane, organizations to automate with confidence and reduce
Ansible Automaton Platform can provide better scalability. automation sprawl and variance across the enterprise.
For example, networking or cloud teams have their own This management interface also decreases the
standardized execution environment specific to their complexity of your automation efforts and prevents
needs while developers have a standardized environment drift between development and production.
that frees them from worrying about dependencies.

Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection:

This prebuilt collection of automation content allows

developers to build on what already exists and helps
operations teams make the most of existing automation,
accessible through the Ansible automation hub hosted
service. Curated content that is developed in-house and
from Red Hat and other sources can be made available
through private automation hubs as well.

16
Ansible validated content: Automation mesh:

This collection of pre-built YAML content is targeted Automation mesh provides a flexible and reliable way to
at the most common automation use cases but also scale the automation of large inventories across diverse
customizable for your organization’s specific use cases. network topologies, platforms, and teams. Architects
While it is not supported or maintained by Red Hat, all require a solution that meets all of their current
Ansible validated content is delivered by trusted industry requirements and can scale to address future needs,
partners, and is digitally signed, so you can be confident all while integrating with current technologies and
that the collection came from a trusted source. providing support and adherence to SLAs. Automation
mesh helps architects by creating a layer to connect
networks and environments in a way that provides
flexibility without compromising focus on security.

Event-Driven Ansible: Automation analytics and Red Hat Insights

for Ansible Automation Platform:
This is a highly flexible solution used to create advanced
end-to-end automation scenarios for a wide variety of Automation analytics and Red Hat Insights help
needs across your IT operations. It can help increase architects better understand automation adoption and
efficiency, resolve issues quickly, and help alleviate performance across the organization. With automation
staffing and skills challenges. As part of Ansible analytics, you can predict and measure time savings with
Automation Platform, it is designed for simplicity and automation, as well as ROI. With Red Hat Insights, teams
ease of use. For example, you can use familiar YAML can proactively remediate performance, security, and
syntax to create Ansible Rulebooks, which are similar to other issues, as well as identify configuration drift across
Ansible Playbooks but use if-then scenarios instead. their Ansible Automation Platform infrastructure.

Learn more about how automation

architects can build with an
automation-first mindset in
The automation architect’s handbook.

17
System or cloud operators and administrators

System or cloud operators need to

automate with speed and efficiency, so
understanding what prebuilt, certified
content is available is essential.

Ansible Automation Platform provides architecture and tooling

that support standardization, compliance, and governance to
help manage automation teams at scale.

Charged with reliably configuring, deploying, running, and

managing automation for multiple teams and applications
inside their organization, administrators need a solution
that’s simple. Ansible Automation Platform is designed to be
consistent and highly reliable, with a shallow learning curve
for new users. Administrators benefit from using both hosted
service and private versions of the automation hub, where
content is centrally shared and managed, and real-time
analytics and reporting using Red Hat Insights for Red Hat
Ansible Automation Platform.

The right tools for system or cloud operators and administrators

Automation controller: Ansible automation hub:

All automation team members interact with or rely on Ansible automation hub is a portal that gives users
the automation controller, and it’s up to administrators direct access to trusted content collections from
and operators to ensure the automation platform and Red Hat and certified partners. This Software-as-
framework are operational. Their administrative tasks are a-Service (SaaS) automation hub is a container
aided by automation controller’s user interface, browsable image repository serving cloud environments that
application programming interface (API), RBAC, job is synchronized with the automation controller
scheduling, integrated notifications, graphical inventory through a container registry credential.
management, continuous integration/continuous delivery
(CI/CD) integrations, and workflow visualizer functions.

18
Private automation hub: Automation analytics and Red Hat Insights for
Ansible Automation Platform:
The execution environment container image repository
for Ansible Automation Platform—the private automation Automation analytics and Red Hat Insights help
hub—is hosted locally. It is intended for organizations you better understand automation adoption and
running Ansible Automation Platform on physical or performance across the organization. With automation
virtual machines. analytics, you can plan and measure time savings with
automation, as well as ROI. With Red Hat Insights, you
can proactively remediate performance, security, and
other issues, as well as identify configuration drift across
their Ansible Automation Platform infrastructure.

Automation mesh: Event-Driven Ansible:

Automation mesh helps operations teams deliver Event-driven automation can be used to automatically
services at the ever-increasing pace of their organization complete tasks across your environment, including
without having to understand the details of the routine management needs, issue remediation, and
automation foundation itself. Automation mesh manages automated responses, such as self-service. Tasks
dependencies and scales consistently without requiring performed hundreds or thousands of times across
knowledge of ancillary tools. The automation mesh your organization are great candidates for automation,
architecture allows central control and distributed such as management of storage or capacity associated
execution through execution nodes, moving automation with a key application, continual tweaks to an essential
closer to the endpoints and allowing a flexible architecture underlying technology, or proactively addressing
that can adapt to a customer’s specific needs. security risks.

Ansible Lightspeed with IBM watsonx

Code Assistant: Ansible Automation Platform is available
through many of the leading hyperscalers’
This gen AI service helps you create Ansible playbooks
with more ease and efficiency, while delivering the
marketplaces, making it even easier to
accuracy, transparency, and data protections that your adopt automation across your public and
organization needs to be able to trust AI-generated code.
hybrid cloud environments.
You can write Ansible code faster using gen AI capabilities
infused with Ansible expertise and best practices.

Now that we’ve explored who uses automation, let’s look at where and how they might
use it. Jump to Where to integrate automation into your organization.

19
Where to integrate
automation into
your organization

Regardless of where you might

be on your automation journey,
Ansible Automation Platform is
designed to help you:

Accelerate

Work faster with the power of Ansible’s massive open source

community and prebuilt content collections of the most-used
Ansible Roles and modules. Codify your infrastructure and
share across teams and environments where you’re already
running deployments, whether on-premise or in the cloud.

Orchestrate

Efficiently transfer your automation into multiple domains

and across different use cases and teams without slowing
down development time.

Innovate

Take automation even further with analytics, policy and

governance, and content management. Ansible Automation
Platform provides tools that make day-to-day work more
efficient, helping you solve problems once and share the
results with everyone.

20
Some of the top areas where
organizations implement automation
across their enterprise include:

1 Infrastructure automation 2 Network automation

Build, provision, and manage applications and Manage entire network and IT processes across
infrastructure across public or private clouds, containers, physical, software-defined, and cloud-based
and virtual environments, including Red Hat Enterprise networks. Use network automation for:
Linux®, Microsoft Windows and Windows Server, other
Linux distributions, VMware vSphere, ServiceNow ITSM, • Configuration management. Back up and restore
SAP, and others. Automate your infrastructure to mitigate network devices from multiple vendors and move
configuration drift and incorporate repeatability of code. toward the next generation of network management
Benefit from event-driven automation, which can be used by using an infrastructure as code (IaC) approach to
to improve efficiency and responsiveness by reducing automate network operations.
high-volume repetitive tasks that are part of IT operations.
• Infrastructure awareness. Collect network
Tasks that are performed many hundreds or thousands
facts automatically from hundreds or thousands
of times across your organization—such as fact gathering,
of multivendor devices and then normalize this
ticket enhancement, and configuration management—are
information to learn which devices and resources
good candidates for event-driven automation.
need preventative maintenance to avoid outage
risks and unnecessary hardware refreshes.

• Network validation. Examine the operational state

of your network devices to check for connectivity
Find out how to streamline CI/CD pipelines and protocols in use, and align them with specific
with Ansible Automation Platform network compliance requirements.

• Event-driven network management.

Event-Driven Ansible connects sources of
events with corresponding actions using rules.
Its decision-making capabilities receive an “event”
from a monitoring tool and trigger the required
action. You can automatically respond to suspected
security risks, manage configurations, or apply
event-driven automation to the above network
management tasks.

Read Network automation guide

to learn more

21
3 Cloud automation 4 Security automation

Use Ansible Automation Platform to provision Orchestrate security systems using a curated
instances, networks, and infrastructure with support collection of modules, roles, and playbooks to
modules that ensure deployments work across public investigate and respond to threats. Coordinate your
and private clouds, whether deployed on-premise enterprise security systems with Ansible Automation
or in the cloud. Event-driven automation can then Platform for investigation enrichment, threat hunting,
use Ansible Rulebooks to define the source of an and incident response. You can quickly respond to
event and explain the action to take—in the form security risks before your environments are adversely
of if-this-then-that instructions—when the event is impacted, or even close down a technology or solution
encountered. It can help manage cloud instances, while you investigate. As a result, event-driven
allocate or deallocate resources, update access automation can help you boost IT resilience.
policies, enforce governance, and more.

Read Automate your hybrid cloud at scale Learn more about security automation
to learn more about cloud automation in this e-book: Simplify your security
operations center.

5 Edge automation

Using Ansible Automation Platform at edge sites takes

IT automation out of the datacenter and to the edge
devices and workloads that are being automated.
Ansible Automation Platform always runs as the
control node, allowing you to automate and speed up
the configuration of points of sale, WiFi access points,
networking routers, ticketing systems, Internet of
Things (IoT) devices, or anything with a programmatic
API or Linux OS. Event-driven automation patterns
can be used to communicate with relevant systems, so
corresponding tickets can be updated with rich detail
to provide better root cause analysis (RCA), take an
action when a device comes online, or automate a
follow-on action when a condition is met.

Discover edge automation industry use

cases in the Automation at the edge e-book

22
6 End-to-end enterprise automation 7 Staying compliant and up to date

Ansible Automation Platform unites workflow Red Hat Consulting can show you how to use
orchestration with configuration management, automation to provide shared visibility for application,
provisioning, and application deployment in a single site reliability engineering, and security teams, and
user-friendly interface, helping you deploy the help you integrate the role of security more holistically
platform across your organization for complete across your organization. Transforming how you apply
IT automation. Now with Event-Driven Ansible, automation can include identifying, assessing, and
there is a choice of automation modes (manually or resolving risks with prescriptive analytics; defining
automatically initiated) to help you meet a broader and enforcing security and compliance on Red Hat
variety of needs. Enterprise Linux systems using OpenSCAP; and
supporting auditing and compliance reporting with
centralized content management.

Learn more about how to unify

people and processes in
The automated enterprise e-book.

23
Given the number of ways you can start
with automation within your organization,
how do you know the best place to start?

These 4 tips can help you choose the best

use case for your IT environment:

1 Start small but think big. 2 Use, refine, learn, and expand.

Begin with a simple use case, ideally something that Automation is a strategic imperative, so treat it
needs to be repeated often but that provides value as such as you implement and automate more
early on. Once you get your use case working, grow and processes and systems.
expand from there, potentially advancing to something
more complicated in the same domain. Over time, add
more domains. Remember, implementing automation
across your organization is an iterative process, not
something that’s done once and forgotten about.

3 Don’t begin with a broken process. 4 Involve your teams.

If current operational processes are inefficient, Automation is a journey. Allow your teams to build skills
automation or AI won’t make them better. Focus and capabilities as you grow automation throughout
instead on processes that work but could be your organization. The more that employees can see the
improved through automation. benefits of automation over perceived potential threats,
the faster they’ll embrace it. Learn more about how
to get early buy-in from your teams in this interactive
e-book: The automation architect’s handbook.

New to automation but ready to take the first step?

Jump to How to get started.

Want to learn more about Ansible Automation Platform partnerships and

how they contribute to Red Hat Ansible Certified Content?
Read about their benefits.

24
The benefits of
Red Hat Ansible
Automation Platform
partnerships

Red Hat has built a robust ecosystem

of technology partners that provide
software and other products that can
support your organization.

For Ansible Automation Platform, these partners are critical,

as their contributions to Red Hat Ansible Content Collections
help you to get up and running on the platform faster. This
precomposed content—from certified partners and Red Hat—
is validated against certain versions of Ansible Automation
Platform and consists of bundles of modules, plug-ins, roles,
and documentation, which you can consume in a single place.

25
What does this mean?

You have less work to do when finding and assembling the With an Ansible Automation Platform subscription, you
different roles and modules you require. Plus, Ansible Content have full access to Ansible automation hub, which has
Collections are released and maintained independently of the more than 100 certified content collections, comprising
main product versions, allowing for a faster release cadence more than 40,000 modules curated for consistent and
for content. compliant delivery.

Ansible automation hub gives you access to more than

100 certified
collections 40k modules

Red Hat Ansible Certified Content

in the Ansible automation
hub includes collections from
partners, such as

• Amazon • Microsoft
• Arista • Datadog
• Aruba • Dynatrace
• Cisco • Splunk
• Dell • VMWare
• Fortinet • and many more
• Google
• IBM Red Hat works collaboratively with partners, including
those who offer monitoring and observability tools,
to advance event-driven automation solutions.
Event-Driven Ansible begins with a certified content
collection that often includes Event-Driven Ansible
plug-ins and rulebooks for organizations to use. This
includes partner-developed content that can help
Explore Red Hat Ansible Certified Content. jumpstart new event-driven automation projects.

26
Strategies for
automation adoption

When it comes to people, processes,

and technology, the latter is often
the simplest to manage within an
organization: when technology
operates as expected, you
don’t need to worry about the
miscommunication or uneasiness
that can sometimes arise when
attempting to get your people
and processes aligned with your
automation adoption strategy.

Of course, people need the most care and attention when

implementing any change within an organization, including
new technology. Automation can cause particular concern for
some employees, as there’s a misconception that adopting
IT automation always results in a loss of jobs. In most cases,
IT automation means the elevation of work, from mundane,
manual tasks to more strategic and innovative opportunities.

27
This transition isn’t always an easy sell.

The good news is you’re not alone, Learn about the ROI, efficiencies,
and there are many resources and other benefits that customers
are realizing with Ansible Automation
available with strategies and tips Platform in this IDC whitepaper.
to help you gain buy-in across
your organization:
Read Tales from the field: A system
administrator’s guide to IT automation,
a compilation of short real-world stories
that outline the excitement, frustrations,
successes, and challenges of incorporating
a holistic IT automation mindset into
organizations and teams across the globe.

Discover strategies and best practices

for getting buy-in for automation, from
the C-suite to the IT department, in
The automation architect’s handbook.

Learn how an IT executive can foster

automation success in The IT executive’s
guide to automation. Find out how to:

• Be a champion rather than a sponsor.

• Align to a business objective.

• Support change and collaboration.

• Encourage adoption by investing

in people.

28
 Dig into this article, “By the numbers: Getting
your team on board with IT automation,” to
find great tips and statistics about growing
automation within your organization.

Ultimately, a team that is properly

trained on automation can be a
successful team. Find out what
type of training your team needs
on Ansible Automation Platform
to either get started or advance
their skills. Red Hat Training and
Certification offers a wide variety
of options for every skill level.

Ready to get going?

Jump to Taking the next step to find out how.

29
How to get started
Want to learn more about Ansible
Automation Platform?

We can help.

Choose the path that’s right for you. Download an Ansible Automation
Platform 60-day trial subscription
that includes Event-Driven Ansible
and access to Ansible Lightspeed.
Connect with Red Hat Consulting
and accelerate your time to Download now
value through a complimentary
automation discovery session.
Red Hat Experts will work side by side with you
to identify your business goals and challenges
so they can provide an automation approach
that best fits your needs.

Get started with no-cost,

Connect with us introductory Ansible training and
learn the essentials of creating,
scaling, and managing automation.

Get started

Are you ready to start transforming

your organization with automation?
30
Taking the
next step

Ready to implement automation

across your organization? We can
help your company get started and
embrace the changes it needs.

See how Red Hat Consulting can help address your

use cases, assess your organizational maturity, and
evolve automation in your organization.

Also, consider Ansible Automation Platform Talk to Red Hat Technical Account
training like the Red Hat Ansible Automation Management teams to help you open up
Platform Boot Camp to accelerate your skills collaboration with other teams, receive
as you expand your automation use. Not sure operational guidance, and take the next
where to start? Find your place on the Red Hat step in your automation journey.
Ansible Automation Platform skills path.

Finally, learn how Ansible Lightspeed Discover how event-driven automation

with IBM watsonx Code Assistant can with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
help your teams turn automation ideas technology works and how you can apply it
into functional Ansible code to create to your IT operational challenges. Use this
Ansible content more efficiently and meet interactive lab to learn at your own pace
organizational demands more effectively. about how event-driven automation can
Learn how to use this technology through help streamline work and deliver better IT
a self-paced lab. end-user experiences.

31
About Red Hat
Red Hat is the world's leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing
Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications,
standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting
services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open
source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

Copyright © 2024 Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat, the Red Hat logo, and Ansible are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States
and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.