Red Hat released Ansible 2.2, the latest version of its agentless open source IT automation framework, bringing performance enhancements, expanded container and Windows automation capabilities, and several new modules, including those for networking, cloud provider platforms, and expanded vault support.
New features include:
- New docker_network functionality enables users to manage docker machine environments and automate their network layers simultaneously. Combined with the ansible-container project, users can now control more aspects of their container development and deployment pipelines, including how containers communicate over a network.
- Since the Ansible 2.1 release in May 2016, Ansible’s supported networking platforms grew from ten to 20, and total network module count has more than doubled. Ansible 2.2 adds network device support for several vendors, including Cisco (ASA); Dell; F5 Networks; Nokia SR-OS;Pluribus Networks (Open Netvisor) and VyOS.
- Expanded and enhanced Cisco NX-OS support provides modules designed to make it easier for customers to operationalize Virtual Extensible LAN (VxLAN) programmable datacenter fabrics through automation.
- New functionality for cloud providers has been added, including: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform and OpenStack providers. Finally, new capabilities for VMware and Amazon Web Services have been added.
- Ansible 2.2 features new VMware virtual machine management modules and supports new AWS capabilities, including Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), Amazon Redshift and AWS Lambda.
“We are excited to see the results of the investments in our Ansible Core engineering team, as well as continued community momentum in our module development. Networking growth in Ansible has been exciting, covering more than twenty percent of all our modules. We are pleased to see continued momentum and commitment to building open source automation solutions for a wide variety of customers,” stated Tim Cramer, engineering director, Ansible, Red Hat.