Ansible - Ansible Tower

 

Ansible Tower:

Ansible Tower is a web based platform that makes working with Ansible easier in large-scale environments, Ansible tower has renamed as Ansible automation platform in the latest version.

Ansible Automation platform has classified as below:

• Event Driven Ansible controller - It triggers playbooks on specific events or react on specific events.
• Ansible Automation Hub - It integrated platform to manage Ansible Content Collections.
• Ansible Light Speed AI [Required separate subscription]

* Installation is controlled by inventory file.  Inventory files define the hosts and containers created and variables on it.

Managing machines with Tower

Managed machines with Tower is similar things from managing machines with Ansible from the command line.

Identify the managing machine from Tower

* setup the /etc/hosts to resolve the DNS of managed machines.

We need to ensure that below setups are in places in the managed machines.

* Ensure sshd is running and accept the incoming connection from the firewall

* Need a user account with Sudo privileges

* Need to enable the password less connection between Tower and managed servers.

Ansible Tower components:

* Organization - It is a collection of managed devices

* Users - Administrative users that can be granted access to specific tasks

* Inventories - Managed servers. It can be created statically or dynamically.

* Credentials - Credentials that are used to log into managed machines (like AWS or cloud credentials)

* Project - It is a collection of playbooks obtained from a certain location (ex. GIT)

* Template - The job definition with all of its parameters. It must be launched or scheduled.

Setup the project in AWX:

We need to follow up below steps to create our first project under AWX.

1) Create a organization

2) Create a inventory 

3) Configure a credentials

4) Setup the project

5) Define a Job Template

6) Run the Job 

Created a Inventory:

Login into AWX console and navigate into Inventories under Resources.

Create a Host file under Inventory:

Create a credentials:

Navigate into Credentials under resources from AWX GUI.

Click on create Credential and define a username and password which is used to maintain a resources and Templates.

Create a Project:

Navigate into Project under resources.

Define a project name and select the AWX environment and GIT repo.

Create a work flow Template for more than 1 job.

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Submit a job and monitor it. We can able to schedule a job for particular time as well.