Automate your Ansible upgrade and migration process

Upgrading your Ansible playbooks is not a “someday-maybe” project, it’s essential. Sticking with outdated playbooks reduces ROI, slows automation adoption, and introduces security risks.
Manual upgrades may seem simple, but every step carries the risk of errors, inconsistencies, and downtime.

Automation eliminates these risks, and quickly ensures accurate, compliant, and reliable results. This guide breaks down the upgrade and migration process into 5 key steps that will help you create AAP-compliant playbooks ready for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.4+ and Ansible 2.15+.

The upgrade and migration process in 5 steps:

1. Assess what you have
Take stock of your playbooks. Some can be adopted as they are, others need to be adapted, and some may not be upgradable due to technical constraints. This will give you a clear overview of effort and priorities.

2. Automate where possible
Use tools to handle repetitive tasks such as syntax updates, deprecated modules, and version compatibility checks. This speeds up the process and highlights only what really needs expert attention.

3. Fix what automation can’t
Make manual changes when needed, such as rewriting complex tasks, updating legacy modules, or solving environment-specific constraints. Focus human input only where it adds real value.

4. Prepare your execution environments
Create or update execution environments that match your upgraded playbooks. This ensures consistent, reliable workflows across all teams and systems.

5. Validate and go live
Perform validation checks for functionality, security, and compliance. Test in staging, then roll out to production. Document the changes and lessons to make the next upgrade is even easier.

Key takeaways

• A structured approach pays off: Dividing the migration into phases reduces risk and makes upgrades more predictable.

• Automate as much as possible: Use automation for repetitive changes and rely on expert review only for complex playbooks.

• Minimize manual risk: Automated processes reduce human errors, inconsistencies, and downtime compared to manual upgrades.

• Future-proof your playbooks: Clean, well-documented playbooks are easier to maintain and upgrade over time.

• Validated results: With proper quality assurance and testing, you can move to newer Ansible and Ansible Automation Platform versions with confidence.

Results

With this approach, organizations can:

• Faster transition from legacy playbooks and platforms

• Reduce maintenance and upgrade costs

• Minimize the risk of errors from manual updates

• Ensure secure, maintainable, and future-proof automation

With this proven approach, teams can speed up Ansible automation journey and focus on delivering automation at scale.

How a Fortune 100 Company Did It

One of the world’s largest Fortune 100 companies faced the same challenge as many other organizations in a highly regulated industry: outdated Ansible playbooks, a legacy automation setup, and the need to quickly migrate to the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. See case study.

With the help of Steampunk Spotter and our team of Ansible experts, they did it:

The combination of automation (Spotter) and Ansible expertise turned a risky, time-consuming upgrade into a 10-week, predictable, and high-return project.

Start your upgrade and migration today

If you’d like to achieve similar results in your organization, we’d be happy to help. You can:

• Book a free Playbook Assessment as your first step, or

• Simply schedule some time to talk to us here: Book a demo

Let’s automate the upgrade and migration of your Ansible playbooks.