We had our 3rd Ansible Stockholm Meetup on the 3rd of May, 2023, at Sunet. It was the time to learn about Event Driven Ansible.
Wikipedia says Event-driven architecture is a software architecture paradigm promoting the production, detection, consumption of, and reaction to an action or occurrence recognized by software asynchronously from the external environment; the software may handle that. In simple terms, some action is triggered by some events. Following the Event Driven Architecture way Event Driven Automation is gaining much popularity today. It mitigates human interaction, therefore, human error with the system. Event Driven Ansible has become a game-changer in the field. It requires things to happen when it is needed. Advancing the Ansible saying, "Automate all things."
Our mentor for the session was Magnus Glantz, Principal Solution Architect at Red Hat and Board member at Open Source Sweden. He started his session by saying, "I am going to force you to talk :)" He explained why Event Driven Architecture is gaining popularity. What is an event? What is an event? and why connect automation to the event? He further stressed on the point that Automation adds hygiene to any system.
We can categorize automation into three ways :
- Tactical Automation
- Process Automation (switch flows, unify process for faster and efficient delivery)
- Advanced Automation (complicated edge use case, AI)
Tactical Automation is something we do in a quick response. Process Automation unifies processes for faster and more efficient delivery. And complicated edge use cases, AI comes under the scope of Advanced Automation.
Path for automation maturity
- Automate service and response (look at the tickets) -> volume increasing
- Expand Sources
- AI OPs
Event-Driven Ansible eases automation and strengthens the infrastructure. It is a scalable, responsive automation solution that can process events containing discrete, actionable intelligence; determine the appropriate response to the event; then execute automated actions to address or remediate the event. This has potential in several areas, such as
- Networking
- Application
- Cloud
- Security
- Infrastructure
Event-Driven Ansible helps keep a system in a desired state and automate time-consuming tasks for any IT domain. In our meetup, some network administrators got excited about EDA. They are especially considering the delicate nature of the switches. Also security can be another area of the solution. Security is another area where EDA can proven to very useful. For example : automating log security.
He ended his session with a detailed demo showing us how to use Ansible Rulebook.
The session was interactive and frank. The meetup, which was scheduled for 2 hours, lasted for three and a half hours, where people discussed different aspects of automation technology and their stories.
Having multiple minds trying to solve something similar gives a different angle and provides efficient and various ways of solution. Join our group and share your quarries, problems, and stories. We are planning our next meetup for the 2nd week of June. Follow Ansible Stockholm meetup page for the update regarding the meetup date. See you all there.