Why you can’t miss using automation with Ansible to sustain in the market.

5 min readAug 1, 2023

Many of my discussions revolve around automation overviews, and the requests often come from those seeking to understand its significance and success. Therefore, this article aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to automation and specifically highlights Ansible, a leading automation platform.

Here, you will find an introductory article that explains why you cannot afford to overlook automation and how you can begin your automation journey, with a particular focus on the top-ranked platform, Ansible.

To start with the power of automation here are some success stories on how automation helps the organization to boost efficiency. time to market and prevent security threats.

How top companies solving challenges with Automation — Ansible — Success Stories

ANZ New Zealand reduced the time required for end-to-end DNS provisioning from 6 Days to 5 Minutes, a time savings of 99.4%. — Link

Faced with time-consuming routine and repeatable network operations tasks,.
Many of these IT business processes, including patching and provisioning servers, require a manual governance process around technical work.
Automating these tasks can depend entirely on the adoption of new technology tools, IT processes, and behavioral changes, which can be difficult to accomplish.
Achieved this successful time savings with agile development practices, including continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), establishing a new culture of collaboration and community with a more team collaboration approach.

Cepsa boosts efficiency with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform — Link

Saved more than 6,000 work hours with a central automation approach
Enhanced service levels with 10–15% faster IT response times
“ They can now reset their password within five minutes when they previously would need to wait more than 30 minutes..”
Reduce human errors and control access — Improved IT security with enhanced access controls

Quoted Message — “ Now the technician doesn’t need to login to restart a service. Instead, this process is automated.. The technician can access Ansible Automation Platform and can restart the service without credentials. And we know that it will always do it the same way because it is predetermined in the code…”

Emory University conquers sudo threat with Red Hat — Link

Using Ansible Playbook to apply the patches took only a few hours whereas usually, it takes 2 weeks.

With automation, your organization can transform and save huge cost/resource utilization to focus on innovation and be more competitive to win with -

Operational efficiency — Save time and cost on manual repetitive work from months to days.
Faster Time to Market — Usual infrastructure provision would take months where with automation it will on take few hours
Security Threats Management — Higher Response for Security threats and save downtime and cost caused by vulnerabilities.

Example — ” When detecting a Denial of Service (DoS) attack from IP address 195.x.x., an immediate action is taken ( with automation mechanisms ) by the firewall device to drop all incoming packets from that address. A new rule is promptly created, ensuring enhanced protection. Security administrators are immediately notified, allowing for swift response and resolution. In cases of false alarms, the firewall efficiently blocks such attempts to avoid unnecessary disruptions.”

Ansible Use Cases

Ansible empowers seamless platform provisioning, smooth application deployment, and robust security management across a wide range of devices. From firewalls and load balancers to storage networks and infrastructure, Ansible handles it all with ease.

Ansible Architecture and Overview

Key Components

Automation Controller ( Formerly Ansible Tower )

Its the control pane -

It includes -

user interface (UI),
Rest API
role-based access control (RBAC),
workflows, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)

Execution Environments ( Formerly Ansible Engine )

Execution environments are defined, consistent, and portable environments for executing Ansible Playbooks and roles.

Execution environments offer a simple, flexible way to build, reuse, and scale automation content.

An execution environment contains:

UBI 8 as a base operating system.
ansible-core (the core automation language).
Python 3.8.
Any number of Ansible Content Collections, and their dependencies (if applicable)

Automation Mesh

Automation mesh enables independent scaling of control and execution plane capacity, flexible and fault-tolerant design options, with resilience to high latency and connection disruptions.

Automation Hub

The automation hub provides a place for Ansible Automation Platform subscribers to quickly find and use content that is supported by Red Hat and our technology partners, delivering additional reassurance for the most demanding environments

As I engage in discussions about automation, a major challenge arises concerning how to cultivate an automation culture and drive its adoption within the organization. Determining the necessary organizational roles and resource allocations further complicates the process.

Here is a clear guide based on redhat how you can plan your organization's reosurnces and start the automation -

Organization Automation Management Roles

Resource Planning for Automation Journey — Reference — Link

Build Automation Strategy — Automation Architect

First of all, you have to assign an automation architecture to design, develop, and implement the company’s automation strategy.

Goal — To bring automation to the organization for all repeatable tasks, and you want to do it as efficiently as possible.

Key Responsibilities —

Evangelize Automation in Organize
Responsible for automation strategy
Say in choosing automation tooling in an Organize

Automation Platform Management — Automation Administrator

Reliably configure, deploy, run, and manage automation for multiple teams and apps inside the organization.

Install, configure, and maintain the automation platform in the organization
Give users access via RABC
Responsible for allowing different tool allowing integrations with different internal/external tools

Creating Automation Content — Creator

Build automation content ( Ansible content) , test it locally, and ensure it runs the same in production.

Write Playbooks and Roles
Maintain all Automation as code in source control
Work mostly on the command line and leverage developer tools such as VSCode
Responsible for automation strategy

Apply Automation Content Created — Automation Operator

Need to know what prebuilt, certified content is available so you can automate with more speed and efficiency

Apply automation content created by the developer/creator
Utilize the Automation platform provided by Automation Administrator
Build and Maintain workflows and inventories to automate

In conclusion, automation with Ansible is not merely a technological advancement; it is a strategic imperative. Organizations that embrace automation stand to gain significant advantages, including operational efficiency, accelerated time-to-market, improved security, and enhanced collaboration. By leveraging Ansible’s capabilities and investing in an automation culture, organizations can navigate the ever-evolving market landscape with confidence and remain at the forefront of innovation and success.

Looking forward to hearing from you on inquiries and clarifications.

Cheers !

Other References —