Configuring-Ansible-Tower.adoc

Exercise 1.2 - Configuring Ansible Tower

In this exercise, we are going to configure Tower so that we can run a playbook.

There are a number of constructs in the Ansible Tower UI that enable multi-tenancy, notifications, scheduling, etc. However, we are only going to focus on a few of the key constructs that are required for this workshop today.

1. Credentials

2. Projects

3. Inventory

4. Job Template

Logging into Tower and Installing the License Key

Step 1:

To log in, use the username admin and and the password ansibleWS.

Figure 3: Ansible Tower Login Screen

As soon as you login, you will prompted to request a license or browse for an existing license file

Figure 4: Uploading a License

Step 2:

In a seperate browser tab, browse to https://www.ansible.com/workshop-license to request a workshop license.

Step 3:

Back in the Tower UI, choose BROWSE and upload the license file you recieved via e-mail.

Step 4:

Select "I agree to the End User License Agreement"

Step 5:

Click on SUBMIT

Creating a Credential

Credentials are utilized by Tower for authentication when launching jobs against machines, synchronizing with inventory sources, and importing project content from a version control system.

There are many types of credentials including machine, network, and various cloud providers. In this workshop, we are using a machine credential.

Step 1:

Select the Credentials icon

Step 2:

Click on ADD

Step 3:

Complete the form using the following entries

NAME	Ansible Workshop Credential
DESCRIPTION	Credentials for Ansible Workshop
ORGANIZATION	Default
CREDENTIAL TYPE	Machine
USERNAME	Your Workshop Username - Student(x)
PASSWORD	Your Workshop Password
PRIVILEGE ESCALATION METHOD	Sudo (This is the default)

Figure 5: Adding a Credential

Step 4:

Select SAVE

Creating a Project

A Project is a logical collection of Ansible playbooks, represented in Tower. You can manage playbooks and playbook directories by either placing them manually under the Project Base Path on your Tower server, or by placing your playbooks into a source code management (SCM) system supported by Tower, including Git, Subversion, and Mercurial.

Step 1:

Click on PROJECTS icon

Step 2:

Select ADD

Step 3:

Complete the form using the following entries

NAME	Ansible Workshop Project
DESCRIPTION	Workshop playbooks
ORGANIZATION	Default
SCM TYPE	Git
SCM URL	https://github.com/ansible/lightbulb
SCM BRANCH
SCM UPDATE OPTIONS

Figure 6: Defining a Project

Step 4:

Select SAVE

Creating an Inventory

An inventory is a collection of hosts against which jobs may be launched. Inventories are divided into groups and these groups contain the actual hosts. Groups may be sourced manually, by entering host names into Tower, or from one of Ansible Towers supported cloud providers.

An Inventory can also be imported into Tower using the tower-manage command and this is how we are going to add an inventory for this workshop.

Step 1:

Click on INVENTORIES icon

Step 2:

Select ADD

Step 3:

Complete the form using the following entries

NAME	Ansible Workshop Inventory
DESCRIPTION	Ansible Inventory
ORGANIZATION	Default

Figure 7: Create an Inventory

Step 4:

Select SAVE

Step 5:

Using ssh, login to your control node

ssh <username>@<IP_Address_of_your_control_node>

Step 6:

Use the tower-manage command to import an existing inventory. (Be sure to replace <username> with your actual username)

sudo tower-manage inventory_import --source=/home/<username>/lightbulb/lessons/lab_inventory/<username>-instances.txt --inventory-name="Ansible Workshop Inventory"

You should see output similar to the following:

Figure 8: Importing an inventory with tower-manage

Feel free to browse your inventory in Tower. You should now notice that the inventory has been populated with Groups and that each of those groups contain hosts.

Figure 9: Inventory with Groups

Figure 10: web inventory group detail

End Result

At this point, we are doing with our basic configuration of Ansible Tower. In the next exercise, we will be solely focused on creating and running a job template so you can see Tower in action.

Next Lab

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