Crane
Crane
Your Automation Platform, as code.
Beta · Configuration-as-Code Export/Import for Ansible Automation Platform
Crane captures a Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform deployment as a Git-native Configuration-as-Code (CaC) repository, making it versioned, reviewable, and ready to recreate or sync on AAP 2.6+.
What it is
Crane is the latest example of what we mean when we say that BacklogZero® adds unique value for Red Hat Ansible customers on Day 1 and Day 1,000. BacklogZero generates Ansible playbooks and creates AAP job templates; Crane captures AAP configurations and keeps backing Git repos in sync.
Your organization's Ansible playbooks and roles already live in Git. The platform that launches them (organizations, credentials, projects, inventories, job templates, and related Controller objects configured in the UI) often does not. That's because the config usually grows in the Controller over time via click-ops and is not version-controlled by default.
Crane is a deterministic CaC compiler developed by Level Up Labs. It is not a backup/restore utility or an AI-authored YAML repo. It connects to an AAP Controller, exports configurations (with secrets never leaving the source controller), packages a Red Hat-aligned "apply repo," and pushes that repo to a remote Git host you choose.
Use Crane when you need disaster recovery, environment promotion, audits, or upgrades without treating the UI as the source of truth.
Beta Status
Crane (Beta) currently ships in annual subscription-based deployments of BacklogZero. It is an optional Podbay profile: enable it when you need CaC; the rest of BacklogZero keeps running if Crane containers are absent.
Honest limits in Beta
No unattended GitOps drift loop, no one-click apply from the UI, no job-history export, no credential secret export, no project/repo migration.
Auto-Sync and Best Practices assess are available; fleet reconciliation and full promotion workflows are later.