Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z: Unified Automation Across Hybrid IT

Originally announced by IBM. Source: devops.com (March 2020).

What Was Announced

IBM announced the general availability of Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z, enabling Ansible users to automate IBM Z (mainframe) applications and IT infrastructure using the same automation toolchain they deploy across the rest of their hybrid environment. The Certified Content is available through Red Hat Automation Hub for Ansible Automation Platform subscribers, with an upstream open-source version published on Ansible Galaxy under the collection name ibm.ibm_zos_core.

Why This Matters for Hybrid IT

Enterprise IT environments are rarely homogeneous. Organizations running IBM Z mainframes alongside x86 servers, private clouds, and public cloud services have historically needed separate automation stacks for each platform. This fragmentation increases operational overhead, slows down delivery pipelines, and creates inconsistencies between environments.

By bringing IBM Z into the Ansible ecosystem, organizations can manage their entire infrastructure — including z/OS workloads — through a single control plane. This removes one of the most persistent silos in enterprise IT: the gap between mainframe operations and the DevOps tooling used everywhere else.

What the ibm.ibm_zos_core Collection Includes

The initial release of the core collection ships with the following automation building blocks for z/OS:

• Connection plugins – Enable Ansible to communicate securely with z/OS hosts.
• Action plugins – Extend standard Ansible action handling for z/OS-specific workflows.
• Modules – Purpose-built modules covering common z/OS tasks, including:
  • Creating and managing data sets
  • Retrieving job output (JES spool)
  • Submitting batch jobs (JCL)
• Sample playbooks – Reference playbooks to accelerate onboarding and demonstrate best practices.

The collection is delivered as a fully supported, enterprise-grade Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection, meaning it carries Red Hat’s quality and support guarantees for Ansible Automation Platform subscribers.

Key Benefits for z/OS Operators and Developers

• Consistent automation language: Teams already writing Ansible playbooks for Linux, Windows, or cloud infrastructure can apply the same YAML-based syntax to z/OS tasks — no separate scripting language or mainframe-specific tooling required.
• Simplified configuration management: Automate configuration and resource access on z/OS using standard Ansible inventory and variable management.
• Leverage existing automation investments: Existing Ansible roles and workflows can be extended to include z/OS steps, rather than building parallel automation pipelines.
• Accelerated z/OS DevOps: Integrates with CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins and Git, which IBM had already been introducing to the Z platform through projects like IBM Z Open Editor, IBM Developer for z/OS, and the Zowe open-source framework.
• Performance, scale, and security: Automation runs against a platform already known for its reliability and security characteristics, without sacrificing those properties.

Context: IBM Z’s Broader DevOps Push

The Ansible Certified Content announcement built on several earlier IBM Z modernization efforts:

• Zowe – An open-source framework (of which IBM is a founding member) that brings modern interfaces and APIs to z/OS.
• IBM Z Open Editor – A VS Code extension for editing COBOL, PL/I, and JCL on z/OS.
• IBM Developer for z/OS V14.2.1 – An IDE update aimed at improving developer productivity on the platform.
• Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z – Announced in early 2020, enabling cloud-native containerized workloads to run on IBM Z hardware alongside traditional workloads.

Together, these initiatives represent IBM’s strategy of bringing industry-standard, open-source DevOps tooling to the mainframe rather than asking enterprises to choose between the mainframe and modern development practices.

Where to Get Started

There are three primary entry points depending on your subscription and preference:

1. Ansible Galaxy (ibm.ibm_zos_core) – Free, open-source version for evaluation and community use. Search for the collection on galaxy.ansible.com.
2. Red Hat Ansible Automation Hub – The fully supported, certified version for Ansible Automation Platform subscribers.
3. GitHub – Source code and documentation for the open-source upstream project, where community contributions and issue tracking are hosted.

Summary

Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z closes a long-standing automation gap in hybrid enterprise environments. By allowing operations teams and developers to manage z/OS through the same Ansible playbooks, inventories, and control planes they use for the rest of their infrastructure, IBM and Red Hat have made it meaningfully easier to include mainframe workloads in modern DevOps and infrastructure-as-code practices — without requiring separate toolchains or deep mainframe scripting expertise for routine automation tasks.

Note: IBM’s statements regarding product direction are subject to change at IBM’s sole discretion and should not be taken as binding commitments.