Note: This blog refers to Red Hat Insights using Ansible Automation Platform 2.1. Automation controller is the control plane for Ansible Automation Platform, formerly known as Red Hat Ansible Tower.

An indispensable but sometimes overlooked tool included with an Ansible Automation Platform subscription is the cloud-based service, Red Hat Insights for Ansible Automation Platform.

Insights is a suite of reporting and analytics tools to help you identify, troubleshoot, and resolve operational, business, and security issues across your entire ecosystem. You can also use Insights to track the ROI of your automation investment and plan future automation projects to prioritize your efforts where they will have the biggest impact on your business.

Before you can start using Insights to better understand your automation estate and make data-driven decisions, you need to set up the flow of information from your enterprise into the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

What you’ll need to activate Insights for Ansible Automation Platform

In order to turn on Insights data collection, you’ll need:

• A current Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform license
• Automation controller 4.1.0
  • Ansible Automation Platform Upgrade and Migration Guide
  • Automation Controller Quick Setup Guide v4.1.0
  • Note: Insights is also supported with Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.5.3 or newer
• Ansible controller cluster(s) that can connect to cloud.redhat.com
• An automation controller instance that can access cloud.redhat.com

 

Turning on data collection in Insights for automation controller

If you are deploying automation controller 4.1.0, you will be prompted to enroll your platform into Insights for Ansible Automation Platform. Selecting these options will connect your automation controller to Insights on cloud.redhat.com.

To connect your automation controller to Insights post installation, simply navigate to the controller settings and select the “Miscellaneous System” settings.

From the details page, we select “edit and configure the Insights for Ansible Automation Platform” section. There are three settings you need to set under Settings > Miscellaneous System:

• GATHER DATA FOR Insights for Ansible Automation Platform must be set to on.
• RED HAT CUSTOMER USERNAME is your cloud.redhat.com username.
• RED HAT CUSTOMER PASSWORD is your cloud.redhat.com password for the corresponding username.

 

Turning on data collection in Insights for Red Hat Ansible Tower

Log in to your Ansible Automation Platform web UI (user interface). The user account must have administrative privileges to turn on data collection. Click on the “Settings” button on the left menu. Note: If the menu is in compact mode, there will only be a small gear representing the settings.

Next click on the “System” button:

There are three settings you need to update under Settings > System:

• GATHER DATA FOR AUTOMATION ANALYTICS must be set to on.
  • You may see “Automation Insights” instead of “Automation Analytics” depending on the version of automation controller or Red Hat Ansible Tower that you’re running.
• RED HAT CUSTOMER USERNAME is your cloud.redhat.com username.
• RED HAT CUSTOMER PASSWORD is your cloud.redhat.com password for the corresponding username.

Here is an example snippet of the Settings > System page:

Click the “Save” button. Once saved, automation controller will sync to cloud.redhat.com up to four times a day. Currently, this sync frequency setting cannot be adjusted.

 

Manual data collection within Insights

If you want to register a system and sync to cloud.redhat.com right away, you can do this using the automation controller command line, which allows you to quickly verify that everything is set up correctly.

Log in as the awx user or an administrative user on the control node and run the following command:

This command will provide output similar to the following:

Don’t worry about re-running the command multiple times. The syncing tool is non-destructive meaning you will not lose data or upload duplicate data. No matter how many times you run the gather_analytics command, the data set will remain the same on cloud.redhat.com.

 

Verifying data sync with automation controller

Login to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console account at cloud.redhat.com, and select Ansible Automation Platform.

Once your automation controller is connected to Insights, you should see the number of connected controllers indicated in the “Insights Ansible Automation Platform” overview dashboard.

Clicking on “total clusters” will show you the job status for the clusters that have been registered.

Newly registered systems will display very little data for several days. The first time you register a system and turn on Insights, it will upload the last four weeks of activity. The automation controller dashboard will not match the Insights dashboard one-to-one because automation controller jobs are filtered out. Examples of filtered jobs include cleanup activity stream and cleanup job details (see Management Jobs documentation).

 

Putting Insights to work in your automation practice

Insights for Ansible Automation Platform gives you deep analytics to help you understand your automation efforts and let your data work for you by proactively identifying and correcting issues, leading to a self-healing infrastructure.

The visibility you gain with Insights can also be used to extend more automation into your enterprise. Insights can help you:

• Receive proactive notifications of critical issues, such as when nodes are down due to missing data or clusters are approaching end of life.
• Track and measure the ROI of your automation efforts and share results with stakeholders outside of Ansible Automation Platform.
• See most used workflows, templates, and modules, and pass/fail rates by time period.
• Encourage the use of automation by rewarding a user or an entire team for creating the most automation tasks.

 

Additional resources

Insights has gone through significant changes in recent months, and additional dashboards, features, and capabilities planned in the months ahead. Check out these new resources to guide you through the latest updates:

• Blog: An introduction to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
• Webinar: Analyze and expand automation with hosted services
• Graphic: Red Hat Insights for Ansible Automation Platform Role-based Benefits