Red Hat's Ansible-native tool manages your Docker Linux containers

Red Hat has announced a new Ansible-native container workflow and administration tool to help its customers better manage their containerised applications on the automation platform.

Ansible Container lets users create Docker-formatted Linux containers within Ansible Playbooks rather than having to use external tools.

According to Red Hat, this will overcome the problem of fragmentation in the area of tools for containerisation, which it said persists despite the emergence of standards for container formats driven by the Open Container Initiative.

The company has also launched new modules for the Kubernetes container management cluster alongside Ansible Container, which can create Kubernetes templates also directly from Ansible Playbook. These two offerings together, Red Hat said, will streamline the container creation process and deployment to Kubernetes-based container application platforms.

Doing this can increase efficiency within IT departments, which can automate routine tasks and adapt to new needs and DevOps workflows.

Greg DeKoenigsberg, director of the Ansible community, said: "Many users in our community have already grown accustomed to using Ansible to deploy and manage their containers, and the Ansible Container project is an encapsulation of many of the community’s best ideas, brought together into a single tool. The user traction we’ve received in a fairly short period of time indicates to us that we’re targeting a critical need in the container tooling space."

Ansible Container and the new Ansible modules for Kubernetes all work with Red Hat's container infrasructure stack, which includes Red Hat Linux Atomic Host, OpenShift, CloudForms, Insights, Satellite, Ansible Tower, OpenStack Platform and Cloud Suite.

Ansible Container is available in technical preview from today.