Red Hat, Inc. announced yesterday that it has released Ansible Tower 2.4 just one month after acquiring the company.

Ansible Tower 2.4 helps DevOps teams manage systems and optimize deployments by adding control, security and delegation capabilities to the simple, agentless, and powerful Ansible open source automation tool.

According to the company, the key new features in Ansible Tower 2.4 include:

  • OAuth authentication via GitHub and Google: Many organizations use external providers for handling their identity and authentication. Ansible Tower 2.4 adds support for pulling users and teams from either GitHub or Google Apps, using OAuth2. With this support, Ansible Tower can pull from the providers that organizations already have in place, avoiding user or group duplication.
  • Enterprise authentication support for SAML 2.0 and RADIUS: Ansible Tower 2.4 extends existing LDAP/AD enterprise authentication support by adding SAML 2.0 for both identity and authorization management, and also RADIUS for authentication. With these features, it is easy to integrate Ansible Tower with the authentication mechanisms and features (such as two-factor authentication) that enterprises already have in place.
  • Configurable Session Limits and Timeouts: Many enterprises have specific security requirements, such as enabling a user to only log into Ansible Tower from one computer at a time. Ansible Tower 2.4 can now be configured not just for session time (with auto-logout), but also to limit users to a specific number of active sessions at any time. If security needs require that a user only have one active session, Ansible Tower 2.4 can invalidate any session the user may have active elsewhere when the user logs in via a new computer.
  • Custom Branding: Ansible Tower administrators can now customize the Ansible Tower login logo, as well as add custom login messages and banners that provide detailed information about the systems being accessed.

Ansible Tower 2.4 is the first release since Red Hat acquired Ansible in October 2015. With the addition of Ansible, Red Hat’s robust open hybrid cloud and IT management portfolio now includes:

  • Red Hat CloudForms, an open management platform that provides orchestration, governance and policy-based control across hybrid clouds enabling self-service provisioning, and resource management as well as quota enforcement, metering and chargeback.
  • Red Hat Satellite, a comprehensive lifecycle management solution with integrated infrastructure provisioning, software distribution, patch management and auditing capabilities.
  • Ansible and Ansible Tower, an IT automation and DevOps platform that provides significantly simplified multi-tier application deployment and IT automation across hybrid clouds.