Managing Enterprise Automation with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Generate reports based on data analysis provided by the automation analytics cloud service in order to improve your use of automation and to plan for future automation projects.
Automation analytics provides a reporting function that you can use to evaluate your automation implementation. To work with these reports, from the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, access the Ansible Automation Platform Overview dashboard, and then navigate to → .
Automation analytics currently supports eleven different reports. The following table describes the reports produced by automation analytics.
Table 10.1. List of Automation Analytics Reports
| Report | Description | Use cases |
|---|---|---|
| Estimate how much money you saved by automating tasks, compared to the cost of completing those tasks manually. | Identify which job templates contribute the most to your savings. Determine the return on investment (ROI) of your use of automation. | |
| The total number of changes made by each job template during a certain period of time. | Evaluate whether the expected number of changes are being made by each job template. Identify the job templates that make the most changes. | |
| The number of unique hosts, grouped by organizations, in automation controller. | Identify the organizations managing the most hosts. | |
| The number of hosts changed by each job template during a certain period of time. | Identify if fewer or more hosts are changed than you expect at a particular time. | |
| The number of times a job template has run in a specific time interval. | Determine which job templates run the most often. | |
| The number of jobs and tasks that were run at a particular time, grouped by organizations, in automation controller. | Identify which organizations are running the most Ansible jobs. | |
| The number of jobs and tasks that were run using a specified set of Ansible modules, grouped by job template. | Determine which job templates use specific modules. | |
| The number of jobs and tasks that were run using a specified set of Ansible modules, grouped by organization. | Identify which organizations are using particular modules. | |
| The number of jobs and tasks that were run using a specified set of Ansible modules, grouped by task. | Determine which tasks are using particular modules. | |
| The number of jobs and tasks that were run using specific modules. | Identify the most commonly used modules in your automation code. | |
| An overview of the job templates that have been run by your Ansible Automation Platform cluster. | Review the status of a particular job template across its job runs to see how many times it fails or succeeds. Review the host and task status for the tasks that fail the most in order to identify potential problems. |
When you navigate to the → page, the graph at the top of the page corresponds to the currently selected report at the bottom of the page. If you select a different report by clicking in its tile in the web UI, the graph changes to reflect that information.
Important
If you click inside the tile for the report, the graph at the top of the page is updated to use that data, but if you click the name of the report in that tile, that is a link that takes you to a new page that consists of the full report.
For each report, you can filter the data by status, jobs, clusters, inventories, organizations, or templates. You can also specify the time period of the data you want to view. For example, you might select the report and adjust its filters to show the subset of that data that was recorded over the last 6 months.
The link in the graph area on the page takes you to a new page for the full report. On that page you can make further adjustments to your filters, change between the and graphing options, and download the report or send it by email.
The automation calculator report helps you identify how much money Ansible automation is potentially saving you, compared to the cost of performing those tasks manually. To access the automation calculator, navigate to → . You need to configure this report to realize its full potential.
The automation calculator report displays a list of your job templates, which you can filter.
For each job template, you enter the number of minutes it would take to perform its tasks manually in the field. The report multiplies the value by the number of times the associated job template runs to determine the total manual time.
To calculate the total monetary cost of manually performing those tasks, enter the hourly rate of the IT professional that would perform those tasks in the field. The report multiplies the manual cost of automation by the total manual time to determine the total manual cost for the tasks in that job template.
The total automation time for the tasks in that job template is calculated by adding up all the time used by successful runs of the job template. To calculate the total monetary cost of running these tasks automatically, enter the hourly rate of your automation processes in the field. The report multiplies the automation process cost by the total automation time to determine the total automation cost for that job template.
The report also calculates the cost of failed automation jobs. It is the amount of time used by failed jobs from that job template multiplied by the automation process cost.
The cost savings in time for a job template is calculated by subtracting its total automation time from its total manual time.
The monetary cost savings for a job template is the automation cost subtracted from the manual cost.
The failed hosts cost per template is the amount of time spent on jobs that failed multiplied by the cost of the configured automated process.
The actual monetary gain you have from a job template subtracts the failed host cost per template from your cost savings in money.
You can export any report as a PDF file or an email message so that you can share the report:
Navigate to the report that you want to export. Adjust the filters on the report based on your needs.
Click the icon.
Select the format for the report and then click .
If you selected the format, click . After a few seconds, your report is ready for downloading.
If you selected the format, configure the details as requested and then click . After a few seconds, automation analytics sends the email.
In addition to the automation calculator report, Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console provides a reporting tool, the automation savings planner, that you can use to predict the time and money you might save by automating a specific set of tasks.
To create a savings plan, you need to perform the following tasks:
Define the details of the savings plan.
Create a list of the tasks to be automated, in order.
Link a previously created job template to the tasks of the plan.
On Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, create a savings plan by navigating to the Overview dashboard and then navigating to → . Click to start creating a new savings plan.
The automation savings planner opens the page, where you define the basic details of the plan.
Enter the following information:
A name to identify the automation plan.
A description for the automation plan. (Optional.)
You can increase the number of hosts by entering the number in the field, or by using the plus (+) or minus (-) symbols to increase or decrease the number of hosts.
Choose from the available list of options. The default value is .
Choose between , , , , or . The default value is .
Choose between , , , or . The default value is .
Click to proceed to the page.
On the page, add a list of tasks that need to be automated.
In the field, enter a description for the new task, and then click the plus (+) symbol to add the task to the list. Add tasks one by one until you have entered them all.
You can remove tasks from the list by clicking . You can drag and drop tasks to change their order.
When you have added all the tasks to the plan, click to proceed to the page.
Select an existing job template from one of your automation controllers that is sending data to automation analytics, and link it to the savings plan. If you have many job templates, you can filter by status, job, automation controller cluster, inventory, organization, or job template.
Click to save the savings plan. The automation savings planner displays the tab of your completed savings plan.
When you have created at least one savings plan, you can calculate how much time and money your company might save by using it. Automation analytics shows you a three-year projection of costs and savings for your automation plan.
To review savings calculations:
Navigate to → .
Click the name of the savings plan to review.
Click the tab. By default it shows you the cost savings in dollars. Click between and to visualize either the monetary savings or the time savings of the plan.
