Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed with Watsonx Code Assistant

Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed with IBM Watsonx Code Assistant is an advanced generative AI service integrated into the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, designed to enhance the efficiency of creating, adopting, and maintaining Ansible content. This powerful tool leverages AI to streamline the automation process, enabling teams to build and maintain Ansible Playbooks more effectively. This article explores its key features and capabilities, and how to get started with Ansible Lightspeed.

AI-Powered Ansible Content Creation: A Collaboration Between Red Hat and IBM

Ansible Lightspeed with IBM Watsonx Code Assistant is the result of a strategic collaboration between Red Hat and IBM, combining their expertise to deliver a seamless AI-driven experience for Ansible content creation. It leverages IBM Watson foundation models tailored for automation, transforming natural language prompts into high-quality Ansible content that adheres to industry best practices. Coupled with the Ansible code bot, this solution empowers teams to develop more reliable automation workflows.

Core Components of Ansible Lightspeed

Ansible Lightspeed is composed of three main elements:

1. Developer Interface: Integrated directly into the VS Code extension via the Ansible extension, this interface allows users to generate Ansible Playbooks or tasks using natural language prompts, receiving AI-powered suggestions for both single and multi-task automation.
2. Integrated Service Layer: This component acts as the bridge between the developer interface and the watsonx.ai service, enhancing AI-generated responses with advanced post-processing to ensure high-quality content output.
3. Generative AI Engine: Powered by IBM Watson Code Assistant, this engine uses automation-specific AI models to provide tailored Ansible content recommendations.

Ansible Lightspeed can be deployed as either a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or on-premises solution, offering flexibility for various organizational needs.

Accessing Ansible Lightspeed

For Ansible Automation Platform Subscribers:

Ansible Lightspeed is available with a subscription to the Ansible Automation Platform, though accessing the IBM watsonx Code Assistant model requires an additional fee. Existing subscribers can initiate a 90-day free trial to explore the service. After the trial period, pay-as-you-go options are available through an IBM Cloud account.

For New Users:

New users can sign up for an Ansible Automation Platform trial and activate their Ansible Lightspeed trial following the provided guidelines.

On-Premises Deployment:

For organizations preferring on-premises deployment, Ansible Lightspeed can be installed using the Red Hat OpenShift operator, along with IBM Watson Code Assistant through IBM Cloud Pak for Data. Contact IBM for detailed pricing and setup information.

Key Features of Ansible Lightspeed

Playbook Creation and Explanation

Ansible Lightspeed supports complete playbook generation and in-depth content explanation, simplifying the process for novice and intermediate users. After installing the latest version of the Ansible VS Code extension (>=24.8.0), users can create playbooks by navigating to the Ansible icon in VS Code, selecting “Playbook with Ansible Lightspeed,” and entering prompts in natural language. The AI then provides a structured outline, which can be refined through an interactive chat interface.

For explaining existing playbooks, users can select “Explain the current playbook” or right-click to access explanation features, ensuring better understanding and maintainability of complex automation scripts.

Single and Multi-Task Generation

Ansible Lightspeed also offers granular control through:

• Single Task Generation: Users can create individual tasks by providing a name and receiving AI suggestions.
• Multi-Task Generation: By chaining multiple prompts with ampersands (&) within a comment line, users can generate detailed, multi-step workflows efficiently.

Adopting Ansible Lightspeed

Content Source Matching

Ansible Lightspeed emphasizes transparency by showing the source, author, and content license of the training data used for its recommendations, fostering trust and maintaining community integrity.

Post-Processing and Best Practices

The service ensures high-quality outputs by adhering to Ansible best practices through advanced post-processing techniques like fully qualified collection names (FQCN), data anonymization, and variable substitution.

Maintaining Automation Workflows

Model Customization and Fine-Tuning

Users can tailor the AI model to better suit their organization’s needs by training it with existing Ansible content. This involves two steps:

1. Creating a training dataset using the Ansible-content-parser tool.
2. Fine-tuning the model through IBM Watson Studio on IBM Watsonx for more relevant and accurate content suggestions.

Ansible Code Bot: Enhancing Content Quality

The Ansible code bot extends automation beyond creation by continuously monitoring existing Ansible Content Collections, roles, and playbooks hosted in GitHub repositories. It proactively generates pull requests for best practices and quality improvements, ensuring consistent and optimized automation workflows.

Getting Started with Ansible Code Bot

Prerequisites:

• A Red Hat customer portal account linked to your organization.
• A valid Ansible Lightspeed subscription.

Installation and Configuration:

1. Log in to GitHub using an account associated with your organization.
2. Install the Ansible code bot GitHub app and select the relevant repositories.
3. Authorize the installation and connect it to your Red Hat SSO account.

After installation, users can schedule regular scans or manually trigger a scan by adding the “ansible-code-bot-scan” topic to their repository.

Conclusion

Ansible Lightspeed with IBM Watsonx Code Assistant revolutionizes the way teams create, adopt, and maintain Ansible content, leveraging AI to enhance productivity and consistency. By integrating advanced AI capabilities within the Ansible Automation Platform, Red Hat and IBM empower automation teams to build robust, scalable, and efficient workflows.

Explore the potential of Ansible Lightspeed to accelerate your automation journey today.