Steampunk Spotter 4.0: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform integration and Windows support

Exciting news! Steampunk Spotter just got a major update with version 4.0. Our team has been working hard to make Spotter even better for you, and this freshly released version brings advanced enterprise features. We want to empower businesses to efficiently manage automation, ensuring safe and efficient workflows that drive collaboration, productivity, and overall success.

Let’s check out the key highlights that Spotter 4.0 has in store for you.

1. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform integration

Spotter now seamlessly integrates with Ansible Automation Platform, unlocking a new level of efficiency, reliability and security in your automation.

You are able to check your Ansible Playbooks before and during the execution. Ansible Automation Platform guarantees flawless execution, while Spotter ensures error-free and secure playbooks before execution using execution environments and also actively checks for issues as the playbook is being executed with runtime checks integration.

2. Windows support

Are your playbooks targeting Windows environments? We’ve got you covered. Especially if you are using modules written in the new way in PowerShell, Spotter will detect issues such as invalid, missing or wrongly typed parameters with a higher level of accuracy than before.

Steampunk Spotter will also warn you if security issues or vulnerabilities are found in the module used for Windows hosts.

With these improvements, modules written in PowerShell have become first class citizens for Spotter, next to those written in Python.

3. LDAP integration

Spotter now offers LDAP integration, a key feature for enterprise-grade security. With the new LDAP SSO support, you can have Spotter up and running as a fully integrated security and compliance platform for your Ansible automation in less than 30 minutes. LDAP integration includes custom user and organization mapping, making it perfect for managing thousands of Ansible users across your entire Ansible infrastructure.

Spotter’s LDAP integration is a game-changer for enterprises, bringing streamlined user management, enhanced security controls and simplified compliance adherence. Read more.

4. New checks

We’ve been busy with adding a bunch of new checks to make Spotter even more powerful:

• Checks that now examine Jinja2 filters, lookups and tests. Steampunk Spotter helps you ensure correct use of parameters and compliance with the recommended formatting.

• Checks that help prevent unexpected bugs and hard-to-find errors, such as an inadvertent use or change of Ansible’s reserved names.

• Checks that guide towards good practices, including not using debugger directives in the production environment.

For a complete breakdown of all the new checks, check out our release notes.

5. Enhanced functionality

Spotter now goes deeper! It can also scan roles within your code, alongside plays and tasks. This means it can catch potential issues early on, like missing module entry point or undefined variables that roles rely on.

6. New in Spotter app

• Understand your scan results

We’ve enhanced the Scan details view in the Spotter app to show you a detailed play or task reconstruction alongside each check result. Get a better understanding of the context and meaning behind your scan results and learn from them to improve your performance. You can also easily share those snippets with a team member that can best help you address the issue.

• Manage custom rules directly in the app

Spotter now supports setting and clearing custom policies directly from the app.

• Enhanced check management

Spotter now supports organization-level management of skipping and enforcing checks directly from the app.

• Scan environment is now displayed in the app, and you can access it inside of every given project.

• Updated Check catalogue

You can now get a rich set of information on each check in the Check catalogue. This includes information on the profile and family of the check, and extending the good and bad playbook examples to display what you should see when running a scan in CLI. Each example is also easily copied to clipboard with a click of the button.

• Improved manageability of your on-premises Steampunk Spotter instance

Many instance customizations are now available to the instance administrators in the Web App. Configure and test the mailing settings, apply your enterprise’s TLS certificate, or configure LDAP integration easily in the Web GUI.

See new features in action

Experience these new features firsthand! Try them out yourself and see how they can streamline your workflows. Want a personalized touch? Our team is happy to provide a guided demo to showcase how Spotter can address your specific needs and business goals. Schedule your demo now!