Steampunk Spotter

Steampunk Spotter 3.0: Enterprise-Grade Ansible Playbook Platform

November 14, 2023 - Words by  The Spotter team - 4 min read

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In the fast-paced landscape of modern enterprise IT automation, businesses are constantly seeking solutions that enhance reliability, security, and efficiency. We’re excited to announce the release of Steampunk Spotter 3.0 , a powerful toolkit that addresses these very needs. The freshly released version unveils the Ansible Playbook Platform, a revolutionary offering set to redefine how businesses of all sizes can optimize their automation processes.

Explore what’s new.

Key Features of Steampunk Spotter 3.0

Automation is a cornerstone of streamlined and cost-effective operations, but managing it at scale can pose significant challenges. This is where Steampunk Spotter steps in, helping businesses automate their IT infrastructure with Ansible. It mitigates risks, increases operational efficiency, and ensures compliance.

Here’s what you get:

1. Scalability

Engineered to meet the demands of even the largest organizations, Spotter 3.0 effortlessly manages increased workloads and extensive volumes of Ansible Playbooks, ensuring peak performance even in the most demanding environments.

2. Enhanced Security

With flexible deployment options, including on-premises, businesses retain complete control over their data, security, and allocated resources. This ensures compliance with industry regulations while optimizing performance and cost savings.

3. Customization

The latest version of Spotter offers extensive customization options. These include custom rules, rule skipping and enforcement, and scanning profiles, allowing businesses to tailor Spotter to their unique requirements.

4. Enterprise Support

XLAB Steampunk provides enterprise-level support, ensuring businesses receive prompt assistance and guidance whenever needed, making the transition to Spotter seamless.

5. Ease of Use

Steampunk Spotter is designed for user-friendliness, enabling employees to quickly and efficiently adopt the software and reducing the learning curve of adopting new tools.

Steampunk Spotter Ansible Playbook Platform

The Ansible Playbook Platform provides a robust solution for businesses seeking enhanced control, performance, and security in their automation workflows.

These are the main Ansible Playbook Platform components:

Dashboard

The Spotter Dashboard offers a centralized view of playbook statistics, health, and recommended actions. It acts as a control panel where users can monitor and manage their playbooks’ performance, security, and compliance statuses.

Reporting

Spotter’s reporting feature generates comprehensive reports on playbook conditions, providing insights into potential improvements and highlighting critical issues that need attention.

Checks

Through its Checks system, Spotter performs detailed analysis to ensure playbooks adhere to best practices, security protocols, and compliance requirements. It includes both pre-built and customizable checks to cater to specific organizational needs.

  • Custom Policies

Users can define custom policies within Spotter, which are then used to evaluate playbooks. This ensures that playbook development aligns with organizational standards and requirements.

  • Checks Management

This functionality allows users to configure and manage the checks that Spotter performs, enabling a tailored analysis that aligns with the company’s definitions

Insights

The Insights component of Spotter dives deeper into playbook data, offering advanced analytics that guide decision-making processes. It helps teams understand the impact of their playbooks on their automation environment.

Consumption Methods

Spotter provides a wide range of consumption options, tailored to your preferences and needs, each offering unique advantages.

CLI (Command Line Interface)

Steampunk Spotter’s CLI allows for direct interaction with Ansible environments, making it a powerful tool for developers who prefer terminal-based operations. This interface supports the execution of Spotter’s functions for playbook analysis and optimization directly from the command line.

App

The Spotter application is a user-friendly graphical interface that provides a dashboard and reports, enhancing the overall user experience.

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment)

Integrating Spotter within CI/CD pipelines empowers teams to continuously assess and improve their playbooks. It ensures that every code commit is evaluated for efficiency, security, and compliance, facilitating high-quality automation in DevOps practices.

API (Application Programming Interface)

Spotter’s API enables programmatic access to its functionalities, allowing for customization and integration with other tools and workflows. This allows for flexible and scalable consumption of Spotter services within diverse IT ecosystems.

All in all, Steampunk Spotter is a powerful and flexible platform for managing Ansible Playbooks, helping businesses enhance quality, maintainability and security of automation and manage playbooks at scale. It addresses the challenges of managing large Ansible environments by offering fast and reliable playbook writing, visibility into IT automation processes, and assurance of secure and always up-to-date playbooks. Try it out.

Interested in Spotter, but don’t know how to start? Explore our Getting started guide.

Stay in the loop and explore new features

Are you ready to elevate your Ansible Playbook scanning and transform your automation processes? If you want to learn more about Steampunk Spotter or to request a demo, contact [email protected] . Steampunk Spotter 3.0 is your key to unlocking the full potential of Ansible automation in the modern enterprise.

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If you want more than just written updates about Spotter, we invite you to visit our YouTube channel. You can witness Spotter in action through various demos and tutorials, offering an engaging way to explore the platform’s capabilities.