Documentation

29. Usability Analytics and Data Collection

Usability data collection is included with automation controller to collect data to better understand how controller users specifically interact with it, to help enhance future releases, and to continue streamlining your user experience.

Only users installing a trial of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform or a fresh installation of automation controller are opted-in for this data collection.

Automation controller collects user data automatically to help improve the product. You can opt out or control the way the controller collects data by setting your participation level in the User Interface settings in the Settings menu.

  1. Click Settings from the left navigation bar and select User Interface settings.

  2. Click Edit.

_images/configure-tower-ui-tracking_state.png
  1. Select the desired level of data collection from the User Analytics Tracking State drop-down list:

  • Off: Prevents any data collection.

  • Anonymous: Enables data collection without your specific user data.

  • Detailed: Enables data collection including your specific user data.

  1. Click Save to apply the settings or Cancel to abandon the changes.

For more information, see the Red Hat privacy policy at https://www.redhat.com/en/about/privacy-policy.

29.1. Automation Analytics

When you imported your license for the first time, you were given options related to the collection of data that powers Automation Analytics, a cloud service that is part of the Ansible Automation Platform subscription. For opt-in of Automation Analytics to have any effect, your instance of automation controller must be running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Much like Red Hat Insights, Automation Analytics is built to only collect the minimum amount of data needed. No credential secrets, personal data, automation variables, or task output is gathered. For more information, see Details of data collection below.

In order to enable this feature, turn on data collection for Automation Analytics and enter your Red Hat customer credentials in the Miscellaneous System settings of the System configuration list of options located in the Settings menu.

_images/configure-tower-system-misc-analytics.png

You can view the location to which the collection of insights data will be uploaded in the Automation Analytics upload URL field in the Details view.

_images/misc-system-details-analytics-url.png

By default, the Automation Analytics data is collected every 4 hours and upon enabling the feature, data will be collected up to a month back (or until the previous collection). You may turn off this data collection at any time in the Miscellaneous System settings of the System configuration window.

This setting can also be enabled via the API by specifying INSIGHTS_TRACKING_STATE = True in either of these endpoints:

  • api/v2/settings/all

  • api/v2/settings/system

The Automation Analytics generated from this data collection will be found on the Red Hat Cloud Services portal.

_images/aa-dashboard.png

The Clusters data is the default view. This graph represents the number of job runs across all controller clusters over a period of time. The example above shows a span of a week in a stacked bar-style chart that is organized by the number of jobs that ran successfully (in green) and jobs that failed (in red).

Alternatively, you can select a single cluster to view its job status information.

_images/aa-job-run-status-over-time-period.png

This multi-line chart represents the number of job runs for a single controller cluster for a specified period of time. The example here shows a span of a week, organized by the number of successfully running jobs (in green) and jobs that failed (in red). You can specify the number of successful and failed job runs for a selected cluster over a span of one week, two weeks, and monthly increments.

Click Organization Statistics from the left navigation pane to view information for the following:

29.1.1. Usage by organization

This pie chart represents the number of tasks ran inside all jobs by a particular organization.

_images/aa-usage-by-org-tasks.png

29.1.2. Job runs by organization

This pie chart represents the controller usage across all controller clusters by organization, which is calculated by the number of jobs run by that organization.

_images/aa-usage-by-org.png

29.1.3. Organization status

This bar chart represents the controller usage by organization and date, which is calculated by the number of jobs run by that organization on a particular date. Alternatively, you can specify to show the number of job runs per organization in one week, two weeks, and monthly increments.

_images/aa-usage-by-org-by-date.png

29.2. Details of data collection

Automation Analytics collects certain classes of data from automation controller:

  • Basic configuration, like which features are enabled, and what operating system is being used

  • Topology and status of the controller environment and hosts, including capacity and health

  • Counts of automation resources:

    • organizations, teams, and users

    • inventories and hosts

    • credentials (indexed by type)

    • projects (indexed by type)

    • templates

    • schedules

    • active sessions

    • running and pending jobs

  • Job execution details (start time, finish time, launch type, and success)

  • Automation task details (success, host id, playbook/role, task name, and module used)

You can use awx-manage gather_analytics (without --ship) to inspect the data that the controller sends so you can satisfy your data collection concerns. This will create a tarball that contains the analytics data that would be sent to Red Hat.

This file contains a number of JSON and CSV files. Each file contains a different set of analytics data.

29.2.1. manifest.json

manifest.json is the manifest of the analytics data. It describes each file included in the collection, and what version of the schema for that file is included. An example manifest is:

{
  "config.json": "1.1",
  "counts.json": "1.0",
  "cred_type_counts.json": "1.0",
  "events_table.csv": "1.1",
  "instance_info.json": "1.0",
  "inventory_counts.json": "1.2",
  "job_counts.json": "1.0",
  "job_instance_counts.json": "1.0",
  "org_counts.json": "1.0",
  "projects_by_scm_type.json": "1.0",
  "query_info.json": "1.0",
  "unified_job_template_table.csv": "1.0",
  "unified_jobs_table.csv": "1.0",
  "workflow_job_node_table.csv": "1.0",
  "workflow_job_template_node_table.csv": "1.0"
}

29.2.2. config.json

The config.json file contains a subset of the configuration endpoint /api/v2/config from the cluster. An example config.json is:

{
    "ansible_version": "2.9.1",
    "authentication_backends": [
        "social_core.backends.azuread.AzureADOAuth2",
        "django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend"
    ],
    "external_logger_enabled": true,
    "external_logger_type": "splunk",
    "free_instances": 1234,
    "install_uuid": "d3d497f7-9d07-43ab-b8de-9d5cc9752b7c",
    "instance_uuid": "bed08c6b-19cc-4a49-bc9e-82c33936e91b",
    "license_expiry": 34937373,
    "license_type": "enterprise",
    "logging_aggregators": [
        "awx",
        "activity_stream",
        "job_events",
        "system_tracking"
    ],
    "pendo_tracking": "detailed",
    "platform": {
        "dist": [
            "redhat",
            "7.4",
            "Maipo"
        ],
        "release": "3.10.0-693.el7.x86_64",
        "system": "Linux",
        "type": "traditional"
    },
    "total_licensed_instances": 2500,
    "controller_url_base": "https://ansible.rhdemo.io",
    "controller_version": "3.6.3"
}

A reference of fields collected:

ansible_version

The system Ansible version on the host

authentication_backends

What user authentication backends are available. For more information, refer to Setting up Social Authentication or see Setting up LDAP Authentication.

external_logger_enabled

Whether external logging is enaled

external_logger_type

What logging backend is in use if enabled. See Logging and Aggregation for details

logging_aggregators

What logging categories are sent to external logging. See Logging and Aggregation for details

free_instances

How many hosts are available in the license. A value of zero means the cluster is fully consuming its license.

install_uuid

A UUID for the installation (identical for all cluster nodes)

instance_uuid

A UUID for the instance (different for each cluster node)

license_expiry

Time to expiry of the license, in seconds

license_type

Type of the license (should be ‘enterprise’ for most cases)

pendo_tracking

State of Usability Analytics and Data Collection

platform

The operating system the cluster is running on

total_licensed_instances

The total number of hosts in the license

controller_url_base

The base URL for the cluster used by clients (shown in Automation Analytics)

controller_version

Version of the software on the cluster

29.2.3. instance_info.json

The instance_info.json file contains detailed information on the instances that make up the cluster, organized by instance UUID. An example instance_info.json is:

{
    "bed08c6b-19cc-4a49-bc9e-82c33936e91b": {
        "capacity": 57,
        "cpu": 2,
        "enabled": true,
        "last_isolated_check": "2019-08-15T14:48:58.553005+00:00",
        "managed_by_policy": true,
        "memory": 8201400320,
        "uuid": "bed08c6b-19cc-4a49-bc9e-82c33936e91b",
        "version": "3.6.3"
    }
    "c0a2a215-0e33-419a-92f5-e3a0f59bfaee": {
        "capacity": 57,
        "cpu": 2,
        "enabled": true,
        "last_isolated_check": "2019-08-15T14:48:58.553005+00:00",
        "managed_by_policy": true,
        "memory": 8201400320,
        "uuid": "c0a2a215-0e33-419a-92f5-e3a0f59bfaee",
        "version": "3.6.3"
    }
}

A reference of fields collected:

capacity

The capacity of the instance for executing tasks. See <link> for details on how this is calculated.

cpu

CPU cores for the instance

memory

Memory for the instance

enabled

Whether the instance is enabled and accepting tasks

managed_by_policy

Whether the instance’s membership in instance groups is managed by policy, or manually managed

version

Version of the software on the instance

29.2.4. counts.json

The counts.json file contains the total number of objects for each relevant category in a cluster. An example counts.json is:

{
    "active_anonymous_sessions": 1,
    "active_host_count": 682,
    "active_sessions": 2,
    "active_user_sessions": 1,
    "credential": 38,
    "custom_inventory_script": 2,
    "custom_virtualenvs": 4,
    "host": 697,
    "inventories": {
        "normal": 20,
        "smart": 1
    },
    "inventory": 21,
    "job_template": 78,
    "notification_template": 5,
    "organization": 10,
    "pending_jobs": 0,
    "project": 20,
    "running_jobs": 0,
    "schedule": 16,
    "team": 5,
    "unified_job": 7073,
    "user": 28,
    "workflow_job_template": 15
}

Each entry in this file is for the corresponding API objects in /api/v2, with the exception of the active session counts.

29.2.5. org_counts.json

The org_counts.json file contains information on each organization in the cluster, and the number of users and teams associated with that organization. An example org_counts.json is:

{
    "1": {
        "name": "Operations",
        "teams": 5,
        "users": 17
    },
    "2": {
        "name": "Development",
        "teams": 27,
        "users": 154
    },
    "3": {
        "name": "Networking",
        "teams": 3,
        "users": 28
    }
}

29.2.6. cred_type_counts.json

The cred_type_counts.json file contains information on the different credential types in the cluster, and how many credentials exist for each type. An example cred_type_counts.json is:

{
    "1": {
        "credential_count": 15,
        "managed_by_controller": true,
        "name": "Machine"
    },
    "2": {
        "credential_count": 2,
        "managed_by_controller": true,
        "name": "Source Control"
    },
    "3": {
        "credential_count": 3,
        "managed_by_controller": true,
        "name": "Vault"
    },
    "4": {
        "credential_count": 0,
        "managed_by_controller": true,
        "name": "Network"
    },
    "5": {
        "credential_count": 6,
        "managed_by_controller": true,
        "name": "Amazon Web Services"
    },
    "6": {
        "credential_count": 0,
        "managed_by_controller": true,
        "name": "OpenStack"
    },
...

29.2.7. inventory_counts.json

The inventory_counts.json file contains information on the different inventories in the cluster. An example inventory_counts.json is:

{
    "1": {
        "hosts": 211,
        "kind": "",
        "name": "AWS Inventory",
        "source_list": [
            {
                "name": "AWS",
                "num_hosts": 211,
                "source": "ec2"
            }
        ],
        "sources": 1
    },
    "2": {
        "hosts": 15,
        "kind": "",
        "name": "Manual inventory",
        "source_list": [],
        "sources": 0
    },
    "3": {
        "hosts": 25,
        "kind": "",
        "name": "SCM inventory - test repo",
        "source_list": [
            {
                "name": "Git source",
                "num_hosts": 25,
                "source": "scm"
            }
        ],
        "sources": 1
    }
    "4": {
        "num_hosts": 5,
        "kind": "smart",
        "name": "Filtered AWS inventory",
        "source_list": [],
        "sources": 0
    }
}

29.2.8. projects_by_scm_type.json

The projects_by_scm_type.json file provides a breakdown of all projects in the cluster, by source control type. An example projects_by_scm_type.json is:

{
    "git": 27,
    "hg": 0,
    "insights": 1,
    "manual": 0,
    "svn": 0
}

29.2.9. query_info.json

The query_info.json file provides details on when and how the data collection happened. An example query_info.json is:

{
    "collection_type": "manual",
    "current_time": "2019-11-22 20:10:27.751267+00:00",
    "last_run": "2019-11-22 20:03:40.361225+00:00"
}

collection_type is one of “manual” or “automatic”.

29.2.10. job_counts.json

The job_counts.json file provides details on the job history of the cluster, describing both how jobs were launched, and what their finishing status is. An example job_counts.json is:

{
    "launch_type": {
        "dependency": 3628,
        "manual": 799,
        "relaunch": 6,
        "scheduled": 1286,
        "scm": 6,
        "workflow": 1348
    },
    "status": {
        "canceled": 7,
        "failed": 108,
        "successful": 6958
    },
    "total_jobs": 7073
}

29.2.11. job_instance_counts.json

The job_instance_counts.json file provides the same detail as job_counts.json, broken down by instance. An example job_instance_counts.json is:

{
    "localhost": {
        "launch_type": {
            "dependency": 3628,
            "manual": 770,
            "relaunch": 3,
            "scheduled": 1009,
            "scm": 6,
            "workflow": 1336
        },
        "status": {
            "canceled": 2,
            "failed": 60,
            "successful": 6690
        }
    }
}

Note that instances in this file are by hostname, not by UUID as they are in instance_info.

29.2.12. unified_job_template_table.csv

The unified_job_template_table.csv file provides information on job templates in the system. Each line contains the following fields for the job template:

id

Job template id

name

Job template name

polymorphic_ctype_id

The id of the type of template it is

model

The name of the polymorphic_ctype_id for the template. Examples include ‘project’, ‘systemjobtemplate’, ‘jobtemplate’, ‘inventorysource’, and ‘workflowjobtemplate’

created

When the template was created

modified

When the template was last updated

created_by_id

The userid that created the template. Blank if done by the system.

modified_by_id

The userid that last modified the template. Blank if done by the system.

current_job_id

Currently executing job id for the template, if any

last_job_id

Last execution of the job

last_job_run

Time of last execution of the job

last_job_failed

Whether the last_job_id failed

status

Status of last_job_id

next_job_run

Next scheduled execution of the template, if any

next_schedule_id

Schedule id for next_job_run, if any

29.2.13. unified_jobs_table.csv

The unified_jobs_table.csv file provides information on jobs run by the system. Each line contains the following fields for a job:

id

Job id

name

Job name (from the template)

polymorphic_ctype_id

The id of the type of job it is

model

The name of the polymorphic_ctype_id for the job. Examples include ‘job’, ‘worfklow’, and more.

organization_id

The organization ID for the job

organization_name

Name for the organization_id

created

When the job record was created

started

When the job started executing

finished

When the job finished

elapsed

Elapsed time for the job in seconds

unified_job_template_id

The template for this job

launch_type

One of “manual”, “scheduled”, “relaunched”, “scm”, “workflow”, or “dependnecy”

schedule_id

The id of the schedule that launched the job, if any

instance_group_id

The instance group that executed the job

execution_node

The node that executed the job (hostname, not UUID)

controller_node

The controller node for the job, if run as an isolated job, or in a container group

cancel_flag

Whether the job was cancelled

status

Status of the job

failed

Whether the job failed

job_explanation

Any additional detail for jobs that failed to execute properly

forks

Number of forks executed for this job

29.2.14. workflow_job_template_node_table.csv

The workflow_job_template_node_table.csv provides information on the nodes defined in workflow job templates on the system.

Each line contains the following fields for a worfklow job template node:

id

Node id

created

When the node was created

modified

When the node was last updated

unified_job_template_id

The id of the job template, project, inventory, or other parent resource for this node

workflow_job_template_id

The workflow job template that contains this node

inventory_id

The inventory used by this node

success_nodes

Nodes that are triggered after this node succeeds

failure_nodes

Nodes that are triggered after this node fails

always_nodes

Nodes that always are triggered after this node finishes

all_parents_must_converge

Whether this node requires all its parent conditions satisfied to start

29.2.15. workflow_job_node_table.csv

The workflow_job_node_table.csv provides information on the jobs that have been executed as part of a workflow on the system.

Each line contains the following fields for a job run as part of a workflow:

id

Node id

created

When the node record was created

modified

When the node record was last updated

job_id

The job id for the job run for this node

unified_job_tempalte_id

The id of the job template, project, inventory, or other parent resource for this job run

workflow_job_id

The parent workflow job for this job run

inventory_id

The inventory used by this job

success_nodes

Nodes that were/would be triggered after this node succeded

failure_nodes

Nodes that were/would be triggered after this node failed

always_nodes

Nodes that were/would be triggered after this node finished

do_not_run

Nodes that were not run in the workflow due to their start conditions not being triggered

all_parents_must_converge

Whether this node required all its parent conditions satisfied to start

29.2.16. events_table.csv

The events_table.csv file provides information on all job events from all job runs in the system. Each line contains the following fields for a job event:

id

Event id

uuid

Event UUID

created

When the event was created

parent_uuid

The parent UUID for this event, if any

event

The Ansible event type (such as runner_on_failed

task_action

The module associated with this event, if any (such as ‘command’ or ‘yum’)

failed

Whether the event returned “failed”

changed

Whether the event returned “changed”

playbook

Playbook associated with the event

play

Play name from playbook

task

Task name from playbook

role

Role name from playbook

job_id

Id of the job this event is from

host_id

Id of the host this event is associated with, if any

host_name

Name of the host this event is associated with, if any

start

Start time of the task

end

End time of the task

duration

Duration of the task

warnings

Any warnings from the task/module

deprecations

Any deprecation warnings from the task/module

29.3. Analytics Reports

Reports from Automation Analytics collection are accessible through the controller UI if you have superuser-level permissions. By including the analytics view on-prem where it is most convenient, you can access data that can affect your day-to-day work. This data is aggregated from the automation provided on console.redhat.com. Currently available is a view-only version of the Automation Calculator utility that shows a report that represent (possible) savings to the subscriber.

_images/aa-automation-calculator.png

Note

Currently this option is available for tech preview and is subject to change in a future release. To preview the analytic reports view, click the Enable Preview of New User Interface toggle to On from the Miscellaneous System option of the Settings menu.

_images/configure-tower-system-misc-preview-newui.png

After saving, logout and log back in to access the options under the Analytics section at the very bottom of the left navigation bar.

_images/aa-options-navbar.png

Host Metrics is another analytics report collected for host data. The ability to access this option from this part of the UI is currently in tech preview and is subject to change in a future release. For more information, see the Host Metrics view.