Red Hat extends Ansible's agentless automation framework to network
infrastructure devices; At launch, Ansible supports devices from Arista,
Cisco, Juniper, and more
RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
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.
Supporting Quotes
Todd Barr, general manager, Ansible, Red Hat
"Today's networks are complicated, and largely comprised of multi-vendor
solutions, making them rather inflexible and slow to react to business
changes. Bringing a DevOps mindset and approach to the network gives
customers the ability to make network operations a repeatable, more
predictable, and automated process. By bringing the power of Ansible,
the popular open source IT automation solution, to the network, we're
giving customers the ability to solve their complicated networking
automation and workflow problems in a new way."
Jay Lyman, research manager, Cloud Management and Containers,
451Research
"The cloud and automation offer a significant opportunity to evolve and
advance the network, bringing together once disparate technologies and
teams. Through Ansible's new networking automation capabilities, Red Hat
is bringing the benefits of DevOps to a new area of IT, and aiming to
help customers do a better job with their networks."
Joe Hielscher, director of Business Development and Alliances, Arista
Networks
"Red Hat and Arista share a goal of enabling joint customers to focus on
improving their businesses, rather than learning complex proprietary
tools. Arista EOS and CloudVision, combined with Ansible by Red Hat,
deliver standards based tools for datacenter administrators, enabling
enhanced operational efficiency and application of DevOps methodologies
for cloud networking."
Mike Cohen, director of product management, Cisco
"The trends of cloud, big data, and microservices demand ever increasing
speed, scale, and flexibility in network infrastructure. By building on
Cisco's open software architecture and open APIs at the core of our
IOS-XE, NX-OS and ACI platforms, Ansible offers our customers an
extremely powerful IT automation tool to pave the way for adopting the
DevOps model."
Brian Ortbals, vice president, Advanced Technology, World Wide
Technology (WWT)
"Ansible is an integral part of World Wide Technology's network
automation strategy. Network automation and programmability using
Ansible is a key component of the training curriculum of WWT
professional services Cisco ACI deployment engineers. WWT has developed
a solution using Ansible to consistently and efficiently configure Nexus
9000 series switches to customer specifications in our Integration
Technology Center (ITC). This announcement further solidifies the
relationship between WWT and Red Hat to help realize the operational
efficiency of #netdevops for our customers."
Additional Resources
Connect with Red Hat
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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Red Hat, Inc.
Anna Eusebio, +1-919-754-4519
aeusebio@redhat.com
Source: Red Hat, Inc.
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