Ansible, Inc., the leading provider of simple, yet powerful IT automation for the enterprise, today announced the release of Ansible Tower 2.2. Tower helps DevOps teams manage systems and optimize deployments by adding control, security and delegation capabilities to the powerful Ansible open-source automation tool that is simple, agentless and powerful.
Key new features in Tower 2.2 include:
- System tracking to help with compliance
- Remote command execution capabilities for ad-hoc and one-off operations
- Integration with OpenStack to seamlessly manage private cloud environments
- Tighter coupling with Ansible Galaxy, Ansible’s community role repository, to enable easy reuse of Ansible content
“Our enterprise customers have provided a wealth of positive feedback on Ansible Tower over the past year,” said Tim Cramer, vice president of engineering, Ansible. “This latest Tower release builds on the control, security and delegation features that Tower brings to enterprise IT organizations that are adopting DevOps and migrating workloads to the cloud. With new capabilities such as System Tracking, Tower is now becoming an indispensible enterprise automation platform.”
System Tracking
Enterprise IT is not just about defining configurations, but also auditing and verifying that machines are in compliance. Tower’s System Tracking was created to give administrators the necessary tools to do just that. Don’t just configure and deploy machines, but track them through the complete lifecycle — their software stacks, services and any other facts that are applicable to your applications and environment. With that information, you can discover how your machines have changed over time, or which machines in your cluster may be out of specification.
Admins can leverage System Tracking and use Tower’s push-button automation to ensure machines are configured and deployed exactly how they should be.
Remote Command Execution
Ansible Tower now allows you to easily run a single Ansible command against any host or group of hosts in your inventory. With just a few clicks — all controlled via Tower’s powerful role-based access control engine and logged in Tower’s activity logs — you can run any task you need, such as: adding users or groups, resetting passwords, restarting a malfunctioning service or patching a critical security issue.
OpenStack Integration
Enterprises leveraging public clouds like Amazon or on-premise IT like VMware require a common framework and methodology to execute successful deployments. Tower 2.2 expands the platform’s dynamic inventory to now include support for OpenStack, the leading enterprise open-source cloud framework. Teams can now deploy anywhere across public, private or hybrid clouds using the same mechanisms and methods.
Galaxy Integration
For users contributing Ansible Roles to Galaxy, leveraging shared roles is now push-button simple. Tower 2.2 makes content easily reusable by letting you define your roles once and use them across your infrastructure. You can take immediate advantage by integration with Ansible Galaxy, or your own GitHub or any other source control system.
Pricing and Availability
Ansible Tower 2.2 is available now at http://ansible.com/tower. Tower is available for a free 30-day trial via Vagrant, Amazon EC2, or download for on-premise or cloud installation.
Ansible Tower is available via subscription tiers suitable for everyone from small companies to full-scale, mission-critical enterprise DevOps teams. See http://www.ansible.com/
