Frequently asked questions about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6

Last month, we launched Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6, and introduced several new features including an automation dashboard, a self-service automation portal, and the Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistant. We hosted a follow-up webinar, What’s new with Ansible Automation Platform 2.6, during which we received some great questions from the audience about how to install, migrate, and upgrade to the latest version. To help you prepare for and navigate the Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 release, we've compiled the top questions and their answers.

Installations, upgrades, and migrations

Starting at the beginning, here are some common questions and answers about the initial setup of Ansible Automation Platform, whether you're trying it for the first time or just updating to the latest version.

Is there documentation for installing or migrating to Ansible Automation Platform 2.6?

Red Hat's official product documentation for Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 provides an installation guide to help you get up and running. 

If you're migrating a previous install to the latest version, read our 2.6 migration documentation.

For a quick overview of the process, read this installation and upgrade blog. 

When moving from using RPM to containerized installations, do I need three separate VMs for service containers (automation controller, database, and automation hub)?

Yes, we still recommend having one VM instance for each service container. See the installation and migration guides above. There are additional changes, so be sure to review the tested deployment models.

Can I upgrade or migrate 2.4 (RPM) on host A to 2.6 (containerized) on host B?

First upgrade to 2.6, then migrate to the containerized installation.

Is a database with high availability (HA) available in Ansible Automation Platform 2.6?

Red Hat does not provide HA solutions. We strongly recommend using a database solution provider such as Crunchy, EDB, AWS RDS, or similar, to accomplish this.

See Ansible Automation Platform 2.5+ Deployment and disaster recovery recommendations for more information. 

How is the database migration handled from Ansible Automation Platform 2.4 to 2.6? Does the database need to be migrated as well? 

Upgrading from Ansible Automation Platform 2.4 to 2.6 handles the change of the database. After performing an upgrade, you can then migrate to a different installation topology.

Automation dashboard 

Do I need Red Hat OpenShift to run the automation dashboard?

No, you can run the automation dashboard on a physical or virtual machine.

How persistent is the data for job history? For example, if I deployed today, would I see data from the last year?

You see all available job history from Ansible Automation Platform. It is stored indefinitely, although we recommend that you forward all logging and auditing data to a third-party analytics solution of your choice.

Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistant

Does Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistant require an IBM watsonx license?

No, only the Ansible Lightspeed coding assistant requires access to the IBM Granite model. 

The intelligent assistant offers more flexibility in terms of model connectivity, and does not exclusively require an IBM license. We currently support Red Hat AI platforms (RHEL AI, OpenShift AI, Red Hat Inference Service AI), and are working on support for third-party model providers including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and IBM watsonx.ai. 

Is the Ansible Lightspeed license included with an Ansible Automation Platform or RHEL subscription?

Access to Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, both the coding assistant and the intelligent assistant, is included with an Ansible Automation Platform subscription. The coding assistant requires an additional license from IBM to access the IBM watsonx Code Assistant model. The intelligent assistant requires a back-end model of your choosing (see the previous question).

RHEL Lightspeed is a different feature, and is included with a RHEL subscription. 

Are there plans to containerize the Red Hat documentation so it can be used by an offline self-hosted LLM tied to Ansible Lightspeed?

Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistant already includes documentation as part of its deployment. Other documentation, such as the Red Hat Knowledge Base and other Customer Portal content, will be available in the future.

Does Ansible Lightspeed share any data with Red Hat?

The intelligent assistant is deployed entirely on-premise. No data is shared with Red Hat.

Self-service automation portal

Do you plan to make the self-service automation portal available on a RHEL 9 virtual machine or for other non-OCP containerized installations?

Yes, our roadmap includes adding this feature as part of the containerized installer for Ansible Automation Platform with the goal of making it available for all customers regardless of their deployment mechanism. 

Are there any plans to make the self-service automation portal available also for RPM-based installations?

The containerized installer is the recommended deployment mechanism for on-premise installs. RPM installations are being deprecated as of this release.

Additional resources

If your question didn't make this list, please check out the 2.6 release notes, or reach out to your account team for further guidance. In the meantime, you can find out more about Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 here:

• Video: What's new: Ansible Automation Platform 2.6
• Video: AAP 2.6: Introducing the self-service automation portal
• Demo: Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistant
• Blog: Measure impact and unlock greater value with the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform automation dashboard