We’re excited to announce the release of Ansible Tower 3.7, part of the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Tower is the scalable execution framework of the Ansible Automation Platform, providing a REST API and UI framework that allows users to scale automation across their enterprise and integrate it into their processes and tools.
The focus of the Ansible Tower 3.7 release is on scalability of automation and improving the experience of our users.
Automate more without bottlenecks
These days automation often needs to work at large scales – both in terms of infrastructure, but also in terms of how many jobs are executed in parallel. With Ansible Tower 3.7 we have put in extra effort to handle job dependencies in a way that helps ensure your jobs aren’t blocked. By allowing project updates and inventory updates to happen while other jobs are running, we’ve eliminated many of the bottlenecks in job processing. This enables jobs to proceed faster and without the need to wait for each other.
Expand access to the Ansible Automation Platform without worries
Scale is not only about the IT technology itself, but also about users. As our customers expand their automation across IT domains, breaking down the silos and connecting teams across the IT landscape in automated workflows, more users and processes start to leverage the platform. Ansible Tower 3.7 takes extra care that even under heavy load the UI stays performant: We’ve optimized processing of common API queries, and reworked how the user interface talks to the REST API to help ensure that the interface stays performant. Thus even when many users watch multiple jobs in flight, Ansible Tower 3.7 will be responsive.
Process complex automation without delays
A large benefit of automation is that there is usually no need to watch it happening. However, in those circumstances where the output is of interest, the logs of the automation execution need to be available as fast as possible to enable users or automation developers to react quickly. In Ansible Tower 3.7 we’ve reworked how we process logs of Ansible Playbooks to help ensure they are stored in near-real-time. We’ve also worked to optimize the process of how these logs are stored, so that even when automation is happening across thousands of machines, the database system is not overloaded.
Simplified and more robust architecture
Your automation is only as reliable as the platform that is delivering it. We’ve simplified the clustering architecture of Ansible Tower to make it more robust and reliable, especially when dealing with underlying network issues. We’ve also replaced Ansible Tower’s external logging infrastructure with a more reliable and performant solution that better handles any hiccups in delivery and queues in case of temporary disconnection.
Enhanced inventory
Automation of infrastructure is not static – things change, nodes are added, servers are removed. In Ansible, dynamic inventories take care of these varying needs. Ansible Tower already comes with a set of ready-to-use inventory sources. In Ansible Tower 3.7 we’ve updated these built-in inventory sources to use the latest Ansible inventory plugins from the newly released Ansible content collections. This includes significant updates to Amazon EC2 and VMware inventory sources.
Easier deployment via Ansible modules
When automating at scale, one of the things you’ll need to automate is your automation platform itself. We’re introducing the supported Ansible Tower collection – a collection of Ansible content that makes it easy to provision and configure resources in Ansible Tower via Ansible Playbooks. For detailed information on the AWX/Ansible Tower collection, see the AWX collection blog post.
Try the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform today
Ansible Tower 3.7 includes all of the above, plus a variety of other fixes and improvements. For detailed information on what is new in Ansible Tower 3.7, please see the release notes. Ansible Tower 3.7 is available to all Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform subscribers today. For more information, and to find out how to try the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform in your enterprise today, visit Red Hat and get started today!.
Originally posted on Ansible Blog
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