What is Runbook?
Rundeck is runbook automation that gives you and your colleagues self-service access to the processes and tools they need to get their job done.
When used for incident management,
- Rundeck will help you have shorter incidents and fewer escalations.
When used for general operations work,
- Rundeck will help alleviate the time-consuming and repetitive toil that currently consumes too much of your team’s time.
- With Rundeck, it is simple and easy to create workflows (called “jobs”) from any of your existing tools or scripts.
- Trigger Rundeck jobs from the Web GUI, API, CLI, or by schedule.
- Rundeck’s access control features make it easy to safely delegate control of tasks to those traditionally outside of operations.
- Rundeck doesn’t make you replace the scripts, commands, or tools you use today.
- You use Rundeck to execute workflows across your existing automation (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, legacy tools, and all of your custom scripts/APIs) or quickly automate previously manual procedures.
- With Rundeck you can reuse the automation skills you already have and add new ones as needed.
- Out of the box, Rundeck gives you capabilities that would be expensive to develop and maintain in-house: workflow control, scheduling, error-handling, logging, access control, option passing, log filtering, web GUI, REST API (with CLI tools) and integration with external sources for authentication, resource model, and option data.
Rundeck feature highlights
- Distributed command execution
- Workflow (including option passing, conditionals, error handling, and multiple workflow strategies)
- Pluggable execution system (SSH and WinRM by default; PowerShell available)
- Pluggable resource model (get details of your infrastructure from external systems)
- On-demand (Web GUI, API or CLI) or scheduled job execution
- Secure Key store for passwords and keys
- Role-based access control policy with support for LDAP/ActiveDirectory/SSO
- Access control policy editing/management tools
- History and auditing logs
- Use any scripting language
Rundeck Open Source and Community version?
Rundeck Open Source is free open source software licensed under the Apache Software License v2.0 (opens new window), and you can participate in the project on GitHub (opens new window). For those who write and run Rundeck jobs at small-scale usage (e.g., limited use or within a team), the open-source Rundeck delivers you the features you need, for free, forever.
Rundeck Enterprise OR Rundeck Pro
The focus of Rundeck Enterprise (opens new window), our commercial offering, is on making Rundeck production-ready and enterprise-scale. Rundeck Enterprise, built on the open source Rundeck, is the bundle of software and services you need to run Rundeck as an enterprise-class service.
Built and tested for the enterprise, Rundeck Enterprise includes exclusive features (including clustering/HA, advanced workflow, enhanced ACL management, enhanced dashboards/visualization) and Rundeck Enterprise exclusive plugins. Professional support and on-boarding services are also part of the Rundeck Enterprise subscription bundle.
RunDeck Cloud
Rundeck Cloud is a fully managed SaaS providing online secure access to the latest commercial Rundeck feature set.
Organizations adopting cloud are looking for ways to stay nimble while improving system availability, quality of operations, and keeping control over costs.
With Rundeck Cloud, platform engineering and SRE teams are able to standardize and automate cloud ops.
- Easy integration with Cloud Services – Receiving events from external providers into Rundeck do not have to open their firewalls for inbound notifications.
- Start in minutes – Immediate access to a dedicated Rundeck without needing to provision, install or manage infrastructure or software.
- Automatic Updates – Rundeck Cloud will be updated without any effort. No need to worry about coordinating and verifying upgrades.
- Built for Availability- Rundeck Cloud will manage all aspects of high availability and reliability. You don’t have to invest time in configuring the redundancy, load balancing, data layer or monitoring the Rundeck Cluster environment. Rundeck Cloud is built upon PagerDuty’s decade of experience in providing a resilient SaaS environment.
- Hardened Security – Rundeck Cloud will take care of security patching, protection, monitoring, and ensuring compliance with industry standards.
Rundeck Community Vs RunDeck Enterprise
Differences between Rundeck Cloud Vs Rundeck Enterprise
Rundeck Cloud and Rundeck Enterprise are 99% the same in terms of features. However, there are differences stemming from the different deployment architectures in what user classes and plugins are available and how job execution is carried out.
User roles and classes
The Opsadmin and FullAdmin roles are not available in Rundeck Cloud, and a user cannot assign those user classes. The highest privileged user role is the AppAdmin which allows full access to manage content (like projects, jobs, node sources etc) but cannot change any infrastructure configuration for the customer account instance.
Job execution
Plugin job steps generally execute in Rundeck Cloud. However, job steps that implement local NodeExecutor or FileCopier are delegated to execute on the Runner automatically. If a Runner is not configured these “local” steps will fail. Runners that match the node filter target will assume the role of the local node.
I’m Rajesh Kumar, a DevOps, SRE, DevSecOps, Cloud, and Platform Engineering expert passionate about sharing practical knowledge, real-world experiences, and industry best practices. I have worked at Cotocus and regularly write about technology, travel, investing, health, product reviews, and digital marketing through my various platforms.
I publish technical articles at DevOps School, travel stories at Holiday Landmark, stock market insights at Stocks Mantra, health and fitness guidance at My Medic Plus, product reviews at TrueReviewNow, and SEO and digital marketing strategies at Wizbrand.
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