Automation analytics security and data handling

Automation analytics helps Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform users measure and forecast automation performance while managing and accelerating the resolution of operational, business, and security issues. The visual dashboards provide full visibility into the performance and return on investment (ROI) of your automation, helping you make informed, data-driven decisions, so you can scale faster.

This FAQ addresses the most common questions on how Red Hat handles customer data for this cloud-based service.

What data is collected by automation analytics?

Answer: Automation analytics only collects the minimum amount of data needed. Data collected from your automation controller includes:

  • Counts of automation resources (including templates, inventories, projects, and credentials).
  • Topology and status of the automation controller environment and hosts.
  • Job execution details (start time, finish time, and success), individual task success, and modules used.

No credential secrets, personal data, automation variables, or task outputs are gathered.

For a more detailed description, see the documentation.

How can I view and control the data that is collected by automation analytics?

Answer: No data is sent to Red Hat unless an Ansible Automation Platform administrator explicitly initiates the data collection, either during or following a deployment of Ansible Automation Platform.

Administrators can perform a sample collection and inspect the data by running awx-manage gather_analytics and examining the created file.

Can I limit what data is sent to automation analytics?

Answer: No. Data collection is not a customizable setting.

What is the impact of not activating data collection for automation analytics?

Answer: Without automation analytics, you will not have visibility into the performance of your automation. Besides the ability to track and measure time and cost savings, you will not be able to gather data for reporting on the health of your automation and tasks running on your hosts.

Is the type of data collected static or dynamic?

Answer: The specification for what data is collected is defined within automation controller and may change in future Ansible Automation Platform updates.

How is my analytics data transmitted and stored?

Answer: Data is encrypted throughout the process, from collection to transmission to storage, across Red Hat infrastructure.

How long will Red Hat retain collected data?

Answer: By default, the service collects and uploads the data 4 times a day. The collected data will normally be kept for up to 24 hours for processing into analytics data. Data uploaded by previous runs will be discarded when the same client uploads new data as part of the daily run.

As we are building the product to show performance with historical automation data, automation data is currently stored for up to 1 year.

What are your security protocols for Red Hat hosted services?

Answer: Ansible Automation Platform hosted services, which include automation analytics, follow these extensive Red Hat Insights data and application security protocols

Can I access automation analytics as on-premise features so that I do not share system data outside of my network?

Answer: Automation analytics is an online service provided within Ansible Automation Platform. No on-premise version of the service is planned at this time.