TPA and Ansible Tower/Ansible Automation Controller#

TPA has support for RedHat Ansible Automation Controller (AAP). Only deploy/upgrade steps are run on AAP. Configure and provision run on a standalone machine with tpa package installed, resulting cluster directory can then be imported on AAP. Support is limited to bare metal platform.

Automation Platform initial setup#

TPA needs the following steps to be done once before being able to use AAP to deploy clusters.

Add TPA Execution Environment image (admin)#

Starting version 2.4 AAP uses container images to run ansible playbooks. These containers, called Execution Environment (EE), bundle dependencies required by playbooks to run successfully.

!!!Note : EDB customers can reach out to EDB support for help with the Execution Environment (EE)

As an AAP admin, create an entry in your available EE list pointing to your EE image.

Create the EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN credential type (admin)#

As an AAP admin, create the custom credential type EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN as described below to hold your EDB subscription access token:

Go to the Credentials Type page in AAP UI.

Set the “NAME” field to “EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN”. Paste the following to “INPUT CONFIGURATION” field:

fields:

- id: tpa_edb_sub_token
  type: string
  label: EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN
  secret: true
required:

- tpa_edb_sub_token

Paste the following to “INJECTOR CONFIGURATION” field:

env:
  EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN: {{ tpa_edb_sub_token }}

Save the changes.

Create a credential using the newly added type EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN .

Setting up a cluster#

Initial steps are run on a workstation with tpaexec package installed.

On the TPA workstation:#

Configure#

Run tpaexec configure command including these options: --platform bare , --use-ansible-tower , --tower-git-repository

[tpa]$ tpaexec configure <clustername> \
         --platform bare \
         --use-ansible-tower https://aac.example.com \
         --tower-git-repository ssh://git@git.example.com/example \
         --hostnames-from <hostnamefile> \
         --architecture PGD-Always-ON \
         --pgd-proxy-routing local \
         --postgresql 16

--use-ansible-tower expects the AAP address as parameter even if it isn’t used at the time. --tower-git-repository is used to import the cluster data into AAP; TPA creates its own branch using cluster_name as the branch name (This allows you to use the same repository for all of your clusters). All other options to tpaexec configure , as described in Cluster configuration , are still valid.

config.yml modification#

config.yml includes the top-level dictionary ansible_tower , which causes tpaexec provision to treat the cluster as an AAP enabled cluster.

Edit config.yml, ensure that ansible_host and {private,public}_ip are defined for each node and ansible_host is set to a value that can be resolved by AAP. Make any change or addition needed, see Cluster configuration .

Run tpaexec provision to generate inventory and other related files.

On AAP UI:#

Project#

Add a Project in AAP using the git repository as source. Set default EE to use tpa provided image.

Allow Branch Override is required when trying to use multiple inventory with a single project.

Inventory#

Add an empty inventory, use the project as an external source to populate it using inventory/00-cluster_name as inventory file.

Overwrite local variables from remote inventory source is also suggested when not setting additionnal variables outside TPA’s control in AAP.

Credentials#

Create a vault credential. The vault password can be retrieved via tpaexec show-vault <cluster_dir> on the tpa workstation.

Ensure the machine credential is available in AAP to connect to your inventory nodes via ssh during deployment.

Template creation#

Create a Template that uses your project and your inventory. Include required credentials:

vault credential
EDB_SUBSCRIPTION_TOKEN credential
machine credential

Set two additional variable:

tpa_dir: /opt/EDB/TPA
cluster_dir: /runner/project

Select deploy.yml as playbook.

Run a job based on the new Template to deploy your cluster.

Use one project for multiple inventory#

TPA uses a different branch name for each of your cluster in the associated git repository. This allows the use of a single project for multiple clusters.

Set Allow branch override option#

Enable the Allow branch override option in the AAP project.

Define multiple inventory#

TPA uses a different branch name for each of your cluster in the git repository. Multiple inventory can be generated using the same project as source but overriding the branch for each inventory.

Define credentials per inventory#

Ensure vault password are set accordingly per inventory since these will differ on each TPA cluster.

Update TPA on AAP#

Updating TPA on AAP involves some extra steps.

Update tpa workstation package#

Update your TPA workstation package as any OS package depending on your OS. See Package installation .

Use EE image with same version tag#

Modify the EE image in AAP to use the same version tag as the workstation package version used.

Run tpaexec relink on your cluster directory#

Ensure that any cluster using AAP is up to date by running tpaexec relink <cluster_dir> . Ensure that you push any change committed by relink command.

$ git status
On branch cluster_name
Your branch is ahead of tower/cluster_name by 1 commit.
  (use "git push" to publish your local commits)
...
$ git push tower

Sync project and inventories#

Sync the project in AAP UI and related inventories if these are not set to use Update revision on job launch and Update on launch respectively. !!!

TPA and Ansible Tower/Ansible Automation Controller

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