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One year of Ansible for IBM Z

  

What a year it has been for both IBM and Red Hat launching Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z! In April of 2020, IBM and Red Hat launched the Ansible and IBM Z integration to focus on providing Ansible content for IBM Z to make automating IBM Z processes simple and consistent with the rest of the enterprise. With six collections launched currently and many more integrations in the form of sample playbooks and use-cases, IBM Z users are well on their way to automating on IBM Z with Red Hat Ansible. 

When IBM started building Ansible content for IBM Z, we initially launched the z/OS core collection with the intent to contribute more collections in the future, enabling automation for IBM Z middleware, software and more. The z/OS core collection focuses on providing the foundational building blocks for automating z/OS operations with Ansible. With over thirteen thousand downloads and plenty of other customers looking at implementing Ansible automation for IBM Z in the year it has been launched, the excitement around the z/OS core collection has been incredible. The adoption by the communities has been tremendous and the core collection has been a big hit. IBM will continue to grow and enhance the collection with new capabilities in the coming months.

When automating IBM Z with Ansible the possibilities are endless, and you are not limited by the collections available. Ansible has the ability to call REST and SOAP APIs, meaning any product that has such an interface can be managed and automated with Ansible. You can start writing playbooks to automate REST interfaces that exist today on Z, such as the z/OS Connect administration APIs, MQ REST APIs, and more. Users can also automate with Ansible on z/OS today by leveraging existing automation, and calling or orchestrating that automation such as executing z/OSMF workflows, JCL jobs, REXX scripts, and more through modules being delivered by the z/OS core and z/OSMF teams. 

New and updated content


The teams have been working hard to expand the scope of the Ansible collections automating IBM Z resources and processes as part of Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z. In addition to the z/OS core collection, IBM has contributed certified collections for CICS, IMS, z/OSMF, IBM Z Hardware Management Console, and IBM Z System Automation. These collections extend your automation capabilities on IBM Z, enabling automation for middleware, hardware, application resources and more. Additionally, the IBM teams are working hard to enable more pieces of the IBM Z ecosystem to be automated with Ansible. You can check out all of the IBM Z collections on Ansible Galaxy, and look out for more coming soon. 

The IBM z/OS core collection has been undergoing major updates over the last year to add new functionality, and address any bugs the community has found in any of the modules. The z/OS core collection version 1.3.1 delivered the ability for Ansible users to manage their APF authorized data sets and libraries in an automated way as part of the normal automated provisioning and CI/CD process. Ansible users can now also query and perform dynamic edits against data sets instead of having to know the location of the data sets prior to automation or manually updating them. Overall, this enables Ansible users to find, copy, and edit z/OS data sets. In response to customer adoption of zFS data sets, we’ve enhanced the zos_data_set module to support zFS. Lastly, we have extended the capabilities of the zos_backup_restore module to allow Ansible users to backup and restore data sets and volumes. 

The IBM Z System Automation and the IBM z/OSMF collections have also received updates recently. IBM Z System Automation recently promoted their collection to Ansible Automation Hub, officially certifying and supporting the modules they have delivered. Leverage the IBM Z System Automation Ansible collection today to ensure high availability and message automation for applications that have been defined as System Automation resources. The IBM z/OS CICS team has also published their Ansible collection to both Hub and Galaxy, with a wide range of content available in the collections and sample playbooks. Check out this code pattern on simplifying mainframe application deployments with CICS using Ansible. As you can see, we are continuing to grow collection's capabilities, and if you want to see a specific functionality added, please raise an issue against the respective collection's GitHub repository with the feature enhancement you are looking for. 

The Ansible and z/OSMF teams have been working together to provide a well defined approach to automation with the two technologies. As a result, the decision was made to deliver a new ibm_zosmf collection, providing unique capabilities for automating z/OSMF assets. This new collection focuses on both the z/OSMF workflow and cloud provisioning and management(CP&M) features that z/OSMF provides. With Ansible and the new ibm_zosmf collection, customers can automate and orchestrate workflow and CP&M tasks as part of their DevOps and application deployment pipelines. IBM recommends that customers who are currently leveraging the ibm_zos_zosmf collection to shift to the ibm_zosmf collection. For any modules that are not included in the new collection that you may have been using, check out the z/OS core collection module equivalents. 

With all the new collection content available in the Ansible for IBM Z space, IBM has been also producing playbooks that leverage the new collections to help customers better adopt Ansible. Upon frequent requests for playbooks to invoke z/OSMF workflows, we delivered many samples that leverage that existing automation. There are also sample playbooks available, leveraging the z/OS core collection, showing how you can use Ansible to automate installation and maintenance processes with SMP/e. Collection contributors have also contributed many playbooks, including CICS, IBM Z Hardware Management Console, z/OS Connect, IMS, IBM Z System Automation, and more coming soon. Explore the Ansible for IBM Z Playbook repository, and check out the playbacks and demos available for some of the samples. 

IBM Z Open Automation Utilities (ZOAU) serves as one of the prerequisites for the z/OS core and IMS collections, and provides extended capabilities to UNIX System Services in the form of a command line. These commands can be manually entered, scripted, or executed as a part of an Ansible module. ZOAU can additionally  export the core command functionality as Python APIs to call from other programs. The updated IBM Z Open Automation Utilities package for version 1.1.1 recently removed dependencies on the XLC compiler and standardized command arguments to stay consistent with other general UNIX System Services commands as well as other bug fixes and enhancements. IBM Z Open Automation Utilities has a solid roadmap ahead, so definitely look out for future updates. Make sure to pick up the new version of IBM Z Open Automation Utilities from ShopZ or download the PAX here

Conferences and Webinars


The team has been actively engaging with the community via conferences and webinars to share the work we are doing, and help shape the vision for our clients on where IBM sees automation for IBM Z heading. There have been plenty of valuable sessions throughout the last year that are still available for viewing. If you or your company has not been introduced to Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z, and are interested in scheduling an introduction, please contact Dan Jast(daniel.jast@ibm.com). Some previous sessions that are available to view today include:


We also have upcoming webinars planned to dive deeper into some of the capabilities the new Ansible collections enable for IBM Z customers:

Additional Links:

Ansible IBM Z Trial
Ansible Content Solutions page
Anisble for IBM Z community