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Configure & Automate

Overview

Configure & Automate delivers enterprise-grade configuration management, application deployment, and IT automation through Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform—enabling organizations to enforce consistent state across hybrid infrastructure at scale without deploying agents.

What is Configure & Automate?

Modern enterprises operate thousands of servers, containers, and network devices across on-premises data centers and multiple cloud providers. Keeping this infrastructure consistently configured, patched, and compliant requires automation that scales with the environment. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform provides that foundation: an agentless, YAML-based automation framework that connects to any infrastructure over SSH or WinRM and executes idempotent playbooks to bring systems into the desired state.

This building block is designed for platform engineers, SREs, and DevOps teams who need to standardize application deployments, automate routine operational tasks, and integrate automation into CI/CD pipelines. By treating configuration as code, teams can version-control their automation, enforce governance through Automation Controller (formerly Tower), and share reusable roles through Ansible Galaxy and Private Automation Hub.

Why Configure & Automate?

  • 🤖 Agentless Architecture: Connect to any host over SSH or WinRM—no agent installation or maintenance overhead
  • 📝 Human-Readable Automation: YAML-based playbooks that are easy to write, review, and maintain
  • 🔁 Idempotent Execution: Run playbooks safely multiple times; only changes needed are applied
  • 🏢 Enterprise Governance: Automation Controller provides RBAC, audit logging, and centralized job scheduling
  • 🔗 Extensive Integration: 3,000+ certified modules covering cloud, network, containers, and applications
  • 🚀 CI/CD Ready: Native integration with Jenkins, GitLab CI, Tekton, and other pipeline tools

Key Features

Core Capabilities

⚙️ Configuration Management

Enforce Consistent State at Scale: Ansible playbooks define the desired configuration state and bring all managed hosts into compliance automatically.

  • OS Hardening: Apply security benchmarks (CIS, STIG) across Linux and Windows fleets
  • Package Management: Install, update, and remove packages consistently across all nodes
  • File & Template Deployment: Distribute configuration files using Jinja2 templates with environment-specific variables
  • Drift Remediation: Detect and correct configuration drift by re-running playbooks on a schedule
  • Secret Injection: Integrate with HashiCorp Vault to inject credentials at runtime without storing them in playbooks

Use Case: A security team enforces CIS Level 2 hardening across 2,000 servers by running a single playbook that idempotently applies every required control.

🚀 Application Deployment & Orchestration

Multi-tier Application Rollouts: Coordinate deployments across database, middleware, and application tiers with rolling updates and health checks.

  • Rolling Deployments: Deploy updates node-by-node with configurable batch sizes and automatic rollback on failure
  • Container Orchestration: Deploy and manage Kubernetes resources, Helm charts, and OpenShift applications
  • Day-2 Operations: Automate backups, log rotation, certificate renewal, and scheduled maintenance tasks
  • Service Validation: Run post-deployment smoke tests and health checks as part of the playbook

Use Case: A DevOps team deploys a three-tier retail application across dev, staging, and production with zero downtime using Ansible rolling updates and automated smoke tests.

🏢 Automation Controller (Enterprise Governance)

Centralized Automation Management: Automation Controller provides the enterprise control plane for scheduling, auditing, and governing all Ansible automation.

  • Role-Based Access Control: Grant teams self-service access to run specific playbooks without shell access to hosts
  • Job Scheduling: Run automation on a cron schedule or trigger via webhooks from CI/CD pipelines
  • Audit Logging: Complete record of who ran what automation, against which hosts, and what changed
  • Survey Forms: Expose parameterized playbooks as self-service forms for non-technical operators
  • Credentials Management: Centrally store and inject SSH keys, cloud credentials, and API tokens without exposing them

Use Case: An operations team creates a self-service portal using Automation Controller surveys so developers can provision new environments by filling out a form—no SSH access required.

Architecture

High-Level Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Developer / Operator                      │
│   Git Push / API Call / Webhook / Survey Form                │
└──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
                           ↓
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              Automation Controller (AAP)                     │
│   RBAC · Job Scheduling · Audit Logs · Credential Vault      │
└──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
                           ↓
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              Execution Environment (EE)                      │
│   Containerized Ansible Runtime · Custom Collections         │
└──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
          ┌────────────────┼────────────────┐
          ↓                ↓                ↓
┌──────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐
│  Linux/Windows│  │  Cloud APIs  │  │  Kubernetes  │
│  Hosts (SSH) │  │  (AWS/Azure) │  │  / OpenShift │
└──────────────┘  └──────────────┘  └──────────────┘

System Components

Component Purpose Technology Scalability
Automation Controller Central management, RBAC, scheduling Red Hat AAP Horizontal
Private Automation Hub Internal content repository for roles and collections Red Hat AAP Horizontal
Execution Environments Containerized, versioned Ansible runtimes Podman / OCI images Horizontal
Ansible Playbooks Automation logic and task definitions YAML N/A
Dynamic Inventory Auto-discover managed hosts from cloud APIs AWS, Azure, VMware plugins Horizontal
Git Repository Version control for playbooks and roles GitHub, GitLab N/A

Data Flow

sequenceDiagram
    participant Dev as Developer / Operator
    participant Git as Git Repository
    participant AAP as Automation Controller
    participant EE as Execution Environment
    participant Host as Managed Hosts

    Dev->>Git: Commit Playbook
    Git->>AAP: Webhook / Project Sync
    Dev->>AAP: Launch Job (or scheduled)
    AAP->>AAP: Check RBAC & Credentials
    AAP->>EE: Spawn Execution Environment
    EE->>Host: SSH / API Connection
    Host-->>EE: Current State
    EE->>Host: Apply Changes (idempotent)
    Host-->>EE: Confirm Changes
    EE-->>AAP: Job Output & Status
    AAP-->>Dev: Notification / Audit Log

Use Cases

Who Should Use Configure & Automate?

Target Personas

👨‍💻 Platform & Infrastructure Engineers

Platform engineers use Configure & Automate to manage infrastructure configuration at scale and eliminate manual, error-prone processes.

Common Tasks:

  • Enforcing OS hardening and security baselines across server fleets
  • Automating patching and package updates on a regular schedule
  • Deploying and configuring middleware (databases, message queues, web servers)
  • Managing OpenShift / Kubernetes resource configurations

Benefits:

  • Manage thousands of hosts with the same effort as managing ten
  • Eliminate configuration drift through idempotent, scheduled playbooks
  • Reduce patching cycles from weeks to hours
🏢 DevOps & SRE Teams

DevOps and SRE teams integrate Ansible into CI/CD pipelines to automate application deployments and Day-2 operations.

Common Tasks:

  • Deploying microservices applications with rolling updates
  • Running post-deployment validation and smoke tests
  • Automating incident response runbooks
  • Managing application configurations across environments

Benefits:

  • Unified automation for infrastructure and application layers
  • Faster, safer deployments with automated rollback
  • Reduce MTTR through automated remediation runbooks

Real-World Scenarios

Scenario 1: Enterprise-Scale OS Patching

Challenge: A financial institution needs to apply critical security patches to 5,000 Linux servers within a 48-hour compliance window without causing service outages.

Solution: Ansible rolling update playbooks patch servers in batches, run health checks between batches, and automatically pause if a check fails—all orchestrated from Automation Controller with full audit logs.

Results:

  • ✅ Scale: 5,000 servers patched within the compliance window
  • ✅ Safety: Zero service outages through rolling batch execution
  • ✅ Compliance: Complete audit trail satisfying regulatory requirements

Scenario 2: Self-Service Environment Provisioning

Challenge: Developer teams wait days for environment provisioning requests to be fulfilled by operations teams, slowing delivery velocity.

Solution: Automation Controller survey forms let developers self-provision environments by selecting parameters. Ansible playbooks handle the actual provisioning and configuration within minutes.

Benefits:

  • Environment provisioning time reduced from days to under 30 minutes
  • Operations team freed from routine provisioning requests
  • Consistent environment configuration across all developer environments

Products & Services

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Description: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an enterprise automation framework that combines the Ansible automation engine with Automation Controller, Private Automation Hub, and Execution Environments to deliver governance, scalability, and supportability for automation at scale.

Key Features: - Agentless automation using SSH / WinRM - YAML-based playbooks for human-readable automation - Automation Controller for enterprise governance and self-service - Private Automation Hub for internal content management - 3,000+ certified modules for cloud, network, and application automation

Links: - 📖 Documentation - 🚀 Get Started - 💻 Ansible GitHub

Core Concepts

Fundamental Concepts

Concept 1: Idempotency

Ansible playbooks are designed to be idempotent—running the same playbook multiple times produces the same result without side effects. If a system is already in the desired state, Ansible makes no changes.

Key Points: - Safe to re-run playbooks for drift remediation - Each task checks current state before making changes - changed vs ok status clearly shows what was modified

Concept 2: Inventory

Ansible's inventory defines the managed hosts and groups them logically. Dynamic inventory plugins auto-discover hosts from cloud providers, CMDBs, and container platforms.

# Static inventory example
[webservers]
web1.example.com
web2.example.com

[databases]
db1.example.com ansible_user=dbadmin

Concept 3: Roles and Collections

Roles bundle related tasks, variables, templates, and handlers into a reusable unit. Collections package multiple roles, modules, and plugins into a distributable artifact.

roles/
  webserver/
    tasks/main.yml
    templates/nginx.conf.j2
    vars/main.yml
    handlers/main.yml

Assets

Demo Videos

Video Title Description Duration Link
Infrastructure as Code with Terraform & Ansible Complete walkthrough of IaC automation including Ansible configuration management 15:42 ▶️ Watch on YouTube

Bob Artifacts

Accelerate IT automation and configuration management directly inside IBM Bob using dedicated pre-configured skills:

Artifact Description Package
Bob Skills Task-specific skill packages providing Bob with domain expertise for Red Hat Ansible playbook authoring, role structuring, and configuration automation 📥 configure-and-automate.zip

Quick Setup

Download and extract the zip package into your .bob/skills directory (either globally in ~/.bob/skills or within your project root at .bob/skills) to immediately enable Configure & Automate skills in your Bob assistant.

Call to Action

Ready to Build with Configure & Automate?

Get Started Now: - 🚀 Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Within Operate:

Other Building Blocks: