Automating with Ascender

Learn how to use Ascender functionality to scale and manage your automation. This guide assumes moderate familiarity with Ansible, including concepts such as Playbooks, Variables, and Tags.

This guide applies to the latest version of Ascender only. The content in this guide is updated frequently and might contain functionality that is not available in previous versions. Likewise content in this guide can be removed or replaced if it applies to functionality that is no longer available in the latest version.

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You can find lots of Ascender discussion and get answers to questions at Ascender Discussion Forum.

• Automating with Ascender
• 1. Overview
  • 1.1. Real-time Playbook Output and Exploration
  • 1.2. “Push Button” Automation
  • 1.3. Enhanced and Simplified Role-Based Access Control and Auditing
  • 1.4. Cloud & Autoscaling Flexibility
  • 1.5. The Ideal RESTful API
  • 1.6. Backup and Restore
  • 1.7. Ansible Galaxy Integration
  • 1.8. Inventory Support for OpenStack
  • 1.9. Remote Command Execution
  • 1.10. System Tracking
  • 1.11. Integrated Notifications
  • 1.12. Satellite Integration
  • 1.13. Run-time Job Customization
  • 1.14. Red Hat Insights Integration
  • 1.15. Enhanced User Interface
  • 1.16. Custom Virtual Environments
  • 1.17. Authentication Enhancements
  • 1.18. Cluster Management
  • 1.19. Container Platform Support
  • 1.20. Workflow Enhancements
  • 1.21. Job Distribution
  • 1.22. Support for deployment in a FIPS-enabled environment
  • 1.23. Limit the number of hosts per organization
  • 1.24. Inventory Plugins
  • 1.25. Secret Management System
• 2. Logging In
• 3. The User Interface
  • 3.1. Views
  • 3.2. Resources and Access
  • 3.3. Administration
• 4. The Settings Menu
• 5. Search
  • 5.1. Searching Tips
  • 5.2. Sort
• 6. Organizations
  • 6.1. Creating a New Organization
  • 6.2. Work with Access
  • 6.3. Work with Notifications
• 7. Users
  • 7.1. Create a User
  • 7.2. Delete a User
  • 7.3. Users - Organizations
  • 7.4. Users - Teams
  • 7.5. Users - Roles
  • 7.6. Users - Tokens
• 8. Teams
  • 8.1. Create a Team
• 9. Credentials
  • 9.1. Understanding How Credentials Work
  • 9.2. Getting Started with Credentials
  • 9.3. Add a New Credential
  • 9.4. Credential Types
• 10. Custom Credential Types
  • 10.1. Content sourcing from collections
  • 10.2. Backwards-Compatible API Considerations
  • 10.3. Content verification
  • 10.4. Getting Started with Credential Types
  • 10.5. Create a New Credential Type
• 11. Secret Management System
  • 11.1. Configure and link secret lookups
• 12. Applications
  • 12.1. Getting Started with Applications
  • 12.2. Create a new application
• 13. Execution Environments
  • 13.1. Building an Execution Environment
  • 13.2. Use an execution environment in jobs
  • 13.3. Execution environment mount options
• 14. Execution Environment Setup Reference
  • 14.1. Default execution environment for Ascender
• 15. Projects
  • 15.1. Add a new project
  • 15.2. Updating projects from source control
  • 15.3. Work with Permissions
  • 15.4. Work with Notifications
  • 15.5. Work with Job Templates
  • 15.6. Work with Schedules
  • 15.7. Ansible Galaxy Support
  • 15.8. Collections Support
• 16. Project Signing and Verification
  • 16.1. Prerequisites
  • 16.2. Add a GPG key to Ascender
  • 16.3. Access the ansible-sign CLI utility
  • 16.4. Signing your project
  • 16.5. Verifying your project
  • 16.6. Automate signing
• 17. Inventories
  • 17.1. Smart Inventories
  • 17.2. Constructed Inventories
  • 17.3. Inventory Plugins
  • 17.4. Add a new inventory
  • 17.5. Running Ad Hoc Commands
• 18. Supported Inventory Plugin Templates
  • 18.1. Amazon Web Services EC2
  • 18.2. Google Compute Engine
  • 18.3. Microsoft Azure Resource Manager
  • 18.4. VMware vCenter
  • 18.5. Red Hat Satellite 6
  • 18.6. OpenStack
  • 18.7. Red Hat Virtualization
  • 18.8. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
• 19. Job Templates
  • 19.1. Create a Job Template
  • 19.2. Add Permissions
  • 19.3. Work with Notifications
  • 19.4. View Completed Jobs
  • 19.5. Scheduling
  • 19.6. Surveys
  • 19.7. Launch a Job Template
  • 19.8. Copy a Job Template
  • 19.9. Fact Caching
  • 19.10. Utilizing Cloud Credentials
  • 19.11. Provisioning Callbacks
  • 19.12. Extra Variables
• 20. Job Slicing
  • 20.1. Job slice considerations
  • 20.2. Job slice execution behavior
  • 20.3. Search job slices
• 21. Workflows
  • 21.1. Workflow scenarios and considerations
  • 21.2. Extra Variables
  • 21.3. Workflow States
  • 21.4. Role-Based Access Controls
• 22. Workflow Job Templates
  • 22.1. Create a Workflow Template
  • 22.2. Work with Permissions
  • 22.3. Work with Notifications
  • 22.4. View Completed Jobs
  • 22.5. Work with Schedules
  • 22.6. Surveys
  • 22.7. Workflow Visualizer
  • 22.8. Launch a Workflow Template
  • 22.9. Copy a Workflow Template
  • 22.10. Extra Variables
• 23. Instance Groups
  • 23.1. Create an instance group
• 24. Jobs
  • 24.1. Inventory Sync Jobs
  • 24.2. SCM Inventory Jobs
  • 24.3. Playbook Run Jobs
  • 24.4. Ascender Capacity Determination and Job Impact
  • 24.5. Job branch overriding
• 25. Working with Webhooks
  • 25.1. GitHub webhook setup
  • 25.2. GitLab webhook setup
  • 25.3. Payload output
• 26. Notifications
  • 26.1. Notification Hierarchy
  • 26.2. Workflow
  • 26.3. Create a Notification Template
  • 26.4. Notification Types
  • 26.5. Create custom notifications
  • 26.6. Enable and Disable Notifications
  • 26.7. Configure the host hostname for notifications
  • 26.8. Notifications API
• 27. Supported Attributes for Custom Notifications
• 28. Schedules
  • 28.1. Add a new schedule
• 29. Best Practices
  • 29.1. Use Source Control
  • 29.2. Ansible file and directory structure
  • 29.3. Use Dynamic Inventory Sources
  • 29.4. Variable Management for Inventory
  • 29.5. Autoscaling
  • 29.6. Larger Host Counts
  • 29.7. Continuous integration / Continuous Deployment
• 30. Security
  • 30.1. Playbook Access and Information Sharing
  • 30.2. Role-Based Access Controls
  • 30.3. Function of roles: editing and creating
• 31. Glossary