Breaking news! Red Hat just announced Ansible Automation Platform’s availability on Google Cloud Marketplace. 

I’d like to take a few moments to provide some more details about this offering and why you should consider accessing Ansible Automation Platform directly from the Google Cloud Marketplace.

As organization’s hybrid cloud environments continue to grow in complexity, so does the need to increase efficiency and speed. The solution is to leverage an automation platform that can help any organization create, manage, and scale their automation efforts across the entire IT infrastructure. Ansible Automation Platform is the glue that coordinates and scales automation across all IT domains, and fosters a culture of collaboration across the disparate teams within an organization.

 

Google Cloud Marketplace deployment

Ansible Automation Platform deploys directly from the Google Cloud Marketplace as a self-managed application. The many benefits include:

1. It deploys into your environment, where you have total control over how you deploy, configure, and operationalize the solution.
2. Ongoing upgrades will be simpler because of this deployment model, so while this is a self-managed solution, it’s still simpler to maintain than if you had started from scratch yourself.
3. The ability to scale out the Ansible Automation Platform environment using extension nodes. 
4. It takes advantage of the many Google Cloud services you are accustomed to, including Google Cloud billing, and you can take advantage of any committed spend you have with Google Cloud (committed use discounts CUDs).
5. You get world class support from Red Hat!

How do you get started with Ansible Automation Platform on Google Cloud Marketplace? Simply visit Google Cloud Marketplace and search for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Subscribe to the offering, and then you can quickly deploy the solution from there. There will be some configuration you need to provide for your environment.

This will take about 30 minutes or so; it installs into a newly created Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network. As a result, there will be some network configuration (VPC Peering) required to access the automation controller UI, and the private automation hub UI. Once that’s complete, you’ll be able to log in to Ansible Automation Platform.

 

Google Cloud Integrations

For many organizations using Google Cloud today, there’s a huge benefit in taking advantage of Ansible Automation Platform on Google Cloud Marketplace. It runs in your Google Cloud account. It integrates seamlessly with many of the Google Cloud services, including Google billing. Additionally, if you have Google Cloud committed use discounts (CUDs), this solution will count towards that spend agreement, and will be reflected on your Google Cloud bill.

Speaking of integration, you will have access to the Red Hat Ansible Certified Google Cloud Collection that includes Ansible content to automate the management of Google Cloud resources. Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collections provide the ability to integrate with many different technologies, and simplifies automation against these technologies. Ansible Automation Platform becomes the glue that brings together and centralizes all your automation needs from cloud to private cloud, to edge, and across numerous automation use cases.

Once you’ve deployed Ansible Automation Platform, with a few simple configuration steps, you can integrate with identity providers (like AD, LDAP, etc) to provide single sign-on, in addition to being able to leverage Ansible Automation Platforms role based access control (RBAC) capabilities.

 

Automation Content

Anyone using Ansible Automation Platform in Google Cloud will definitely want to start by using the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for Google Cloud. With your Ansible Automation Platform subscription, you have access to ALL the Red Hat Certified Content available on Ansible automation hub.

The Google Cloud Collection includes over 170+ modules to interrogate, manage, and automate numerous Google Cloud resource types. From Google compute engine, to networking, to databases, to Google Kubernetes Engine, to storage, to security groups, to Identity and Access Management (IAM)… and so much more.  

If you’d like to see the full list of modules you can check it out here on Ansible automation hub.  

There’s some great automation content available for you to leverage with examples to learn from if you’re new to using Ansible Automation Platform on Google Cloud.

Here’s a GitHub repository that has automation content for automating some Google Cloud (and other environments) network resources, like creating VPC networking, and more.

Remember to take advantage of the many Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collections you can find on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. There’s a high probability that the technologies you use today in your environment have Certified Collections here, and enable you to automate many of the use cases you have today.

https://console.redhat.com/ansible/automation-hub

The image below shows a small sample of what’s available.

Is this just for automating in Google Cloud?

A question that often comes up is, “If I deploy and access Ansible Automation Platform on Google Cloud, does that mean I can only perform automation against Google Cloud resources?” The great thing about Ansible Automation Platform is that it doesn’t matter where you run it. You are able to automate public cloud, private cloud, physical and virtual environments, and edge resources. Obviously, one of the requirements is having proper networking configuration and connectivity. Deploy Ansible Automation Platform on Google Cloud, and automate anywhere your heart desires!

The automation use cases are endless, and there are so many efficiencies and savings to gain by using Ansible Automation Platform. Reduce human errors, automation repetitive activities, integrate into DevOps use cases, and increase collaboration amongst the many different IT domains.

What can I do next?

To learn more about Ansible Automation Platform on Google Cloud Marketplace, visit the page here. Also to learn more about Ansible Automation Platform on other hyperscalers, please visit the page here.

For hands-on self-paced lab(s) on Ansible Automation Platform, you can visit here. You can also take a look at the Ansible Automation Platform on Google Cloud documentation.

Consider trying other Red Hat products from the Google Cloud Marketplace.