Red Hat Announces New Ansible Capabilities 

RALEIGH, N.C., Feb. 18 -- Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it is bringing DevOps to networking by extending Ansible - its powerful IT automation and DevOps platform - to include native agentless support for automating heterogeneous network infrastructure devices using the same simple human and machine readable automation language that Ansible provides to IT teams. With expanded Ansible networking capabilities, Red Hat is aiming to help customers orchestrate entire application infrastructures, including network devices, with one automation tool.

The 2015 "SDx Cloud Management Report: OpenStack and More," highlighted the results of a recent survey on cloud architectures and platforms, stating, "When asked what they felt was the most immature component in cloud management, the overwhelming response was the network at 76%." By including network devices as part of the overall architecture of Ansible, Red Hat customers can benefit from increased IT agility through operational efficiency, bridging the traditional divide between IT operations and networking teams, and advancing agility and modernization efforts.

Using Ansible's simple, powerful, and agentless approach, organizations will have the ability to unify operational methodologies across their IT infrastructure in a new way - by orchestrating compute, applications, virtualization, and now, networking. This approach offers many customer benefits, including:

• For network teams looking to apply more agile DevOps methodologies to network infrastructures, Ansible can enhance their ability to build and operate heterogeneous network devices, freeing them up to focus on evolving the network to meet the changing business needs instead of manually pushing network configuration.
• For systems and applications teams that wish to include network devices in a holistic approach to application workload management, Ansible's native network device support enables them to extend their DevOps tools and practices to heterogeneous network devices.
• For executives and senior management concerned about their organization's ability to automate and orchestrate solutions in an increasingly complex IT environment, Ansible provides a framework that integrates diverse network devices without introducing vertically integrated, vendor specific applications and operational methodologies.

At launch, Red Hat's Ansible networking framework provides support for:

• Arista Networks - Arista EOS;
• Cisco Systems - Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI); Cisco IOS-XE; Cisco IOS-XR; and Cisco NX-OS;
• Cumulus Networks - Cumulus Linux;
• OpenSwitch.net - OpenSwitch; and
• Juniper Networks - Junos OS.

Availability

Support for automating network infrastructure devices in Ansible is available immediately.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.

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Source: Red Hat