🚀 IBM z/OS Ansible Core v2.1.0-beta.1 is now available!
🍂 Cozy sweaters, crunchy leaves, pumpkin spice everything — the "-ber" months are almost here, and we're kicking them off with something to get excited about. IBM z/OS Ansible Core Collection (ibm_zos_core) version 2.1.0-beta.1 has released to Galaxy and is available on GitHub!
This beta release includes enhancements to existing modules, a new module for retrieving RACF user and group profile information, and a collection of targeted bugfixes. We'd love for you to try it out and share your feedback before it becomes Generally Available.
🆕 What's New in 2.1.0-beta.1
This release introduces the zos_user_info module, enabling you to retrieve user and group profile information directly from RACF in your playbooks. The zos_stat module has been extended to expose ISPF statistics and extended member listing attributes for z/OS data set members. And zos_backup_restore now supports renaming data sets during a restore operation, giving you greater flexibility when recovering data into a different naming context.
🛠️ Bugfixes
This release addresses several important issues. Template rendering with use_template has been improved across zos_copy, zos_job_submit, and zos_script so that loop variables, indices, dict keys, and nested variable references are correctly resolved before Jinja2 rendering. The zos_copy module received a remote cleanup fix to ensure pre-existing data sets are not inadvertently deleted on copy failures. The zos_encode module now provides clearer error messages for uncataloged generation data sets. And zos_job_query addresses a RACF violation that could occur when job_id or owner were not set — both now default to None instead of *. To explore everything included in this release, from new features and enhancements to known issues, be sure to check out the release notes.
💡 We Want Your Feedback
The development team always welcomes and is grateful for your:
- Enhancement ideas and bug reports: Please create a GitHub issue.
- General feedback:
Your input helps improve the collection with every release.
📚 Resources
IBM z/OS Core Collection on Galaxy
IBM z/OS Core Collection Repository on GitHub
IBM z/OS Core Collection on Automation Hub
Red Hat® Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z documentation
IBM Z Open Automation Utilities
🙌 Acknowledgments
A huge thank you to our development team — their hard work, dedication, and attention to detail made this release possible.
- Sarah Miller
- Surendra Ravella
- Yogesh Rana
✍️ About the Author
Ketan Kelkar is a Software Engineer with seven years of experience in mainframe automation. He is currently the Technical Lead for the IBM z/OS Ansible Core collection team.