Friday Five — March 18, 2016

Ansible could be a simplifying addition to Red Hat for mixed operating system data centers, or for shops that are on the fence with Satellite, but that doesn't mean Red Hat users face an immediate Ansible vs. Puppet choice... Configuration management automation helps deploy various parts of infrastructure, especially for large IT environments. Red Hat administrators might add automation to deployment of instances in a cloud, configuration management on servers, the release of corporate applications and other tasks. Red Hat has multiple products in its portfolio to make configuration management automation easier, but little has been done, to date, to standardize the underpinning framework. Ansible attracts adherents due to ease of use, but it is only one of the open source configuration management options available. Ansible competes with established players such as Puppet, Chef and Salt. Each automation platform has pros and cons. The biggest advantages of Ansible versus Puppet, Chef and others is that Ansible is agentless, which makes it relatively easy to push configuration changes to managed machines.

Calling all network operations teams. The simple, powerful, and agentless automation platform that systems and development teams are already using is now available for networks. With the Ansible networking release, organizations can automate the deployment, configuration, and management of network devices. These new capabilities enable network teams to rapidly test and validate existing network state, automate the configuration of entire network stacks, and ensure continuous compliance of network configurations. Want to learn more? Check out our Ansible + Network webcast.

We are pleased to announce the beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8, the latest version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 platform. Nearly six years into its lifecycle, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 provides a stable, proven, and predictable foundation for organizations seeking to build and deploy large, complex IT projects with confidence. The beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 includes a number of new and updated features to help organizations preserve investments in existing infrastructure, bolster platform security, enhance application stability, and systems management/monitoring capabilities, and embrace some of the latest Linux innovations.

TMG Health, the largest business process outsourcing provider in the Medicare and Medicaid market, delivers more than 3 million file feeds to clients daily. A slow, batch-oriented legacy environment was preventing TMG from providing continuous data visibility and access to its clients. With help from Red Hat Consulting, TMG deployed Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and other Red Hat solutions to reduce development time and costs and deliver real-time data access and visibility to its clients.

"Why is it so hard to get people to change? That's one of the most common complaints I hear from executives in other organizations. They and their boards make decisions and send out orders and then, nothing happens... What I have learned as the CEO of Red Hat is the value of getting our associates involved in creating the solutions rather than just sharing the decisions with them after the fact. We call it inclusive decision-making... I have learned there is incredible value when we get our associates involved in creating the solutions rather than just expecting them to execute on whatever management has decided they should do. By using simple technology like email and online forums as an ally, we can reach out to far more people in the organization that can fit in any one meeting room and collect feedback on the ideas we are considering implementing... But why would anyone go through all of that work? The simple answer is because it leads to better decisions, better engagement, and better execution. As a result, we can often turn on a dime–which gives us incredible competitive advantages. Given that, I think the more important question now becomes: Why wouldn't you make decisions this way?" —Jim Whitehurst, CEO, Red Hat