An Ansible Tower operator for Kubernetes built with Operator SDK and Ansible.
Also configurable to run the open source AWX instead of Tower (helpful for certain use cases where a license requirement is not warranted, like CI environments).
There are already official OpenShift/Kubernetes installers available for both AWX and Ansible Tower:
This operator is meant to provide a more Kubernetes-native installation method for Ansible Tower or AWX via a Tower Custom Resource Definition (CRD).
Note that the operator is not supported by Red Hat, and is in alpha status. Long-term, this operator will become the supported method of installing on Kubernetes and Openshift, and will be listed on OperatorHub.io. For now, use it at your own risk!
This Kubernetes Operator is meant to be deployed in your Kubernetes cluster(s) and can manage one or more Tower or AWX instances in any namespace.
First you need to deploy Tower Operator into your cluster:
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible/tower-operator/devel/deploy/tower-operator.yaml
Then you can create instances of Tower, for example:
-
Make sure the namespace you're deploying into already exists (e.g.
kubectl create namespace ansible-tower
). -
Create a file named
my-tower.yml
with the following contents:--- apiVersion: tower.ansible.com/v1beta1 kind: Tower metadata: name: tower namespace: ansible-tower spec: deployment_type: tower tower_secret_key: aabbcc tower_admin_user: test tower_admin_email: [email protected] tower_admin_password: changeme tower_broadcast_websocket_secret: changeme
-
Use
kubectl
to create the mcrouter instance in your cluster:kubectl apply -f my-tower.yml
After a few minutes, your new Tower instance will be accessible at http://tower.mycompany.com/
(assuming your cluster has an Ingress controller configured). Log in using the tower_admin_
credentials configured in the spec
, and supply a valid license to begin using Tower.
To deploy Ansible Tower, images are pulled from the Red Hat Registry. Your Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster will have to have Authentication Enabled for the Red Hat Registry for this to work, otherwise the Tower image will not be pulled.
If you deploy Ansible AWX, images are available from public registries, so no authentication is required.
If you would like to deploy AWX (the open source upstream of Tower) into your cluster instead of Tower, override the default variables in the Tower spec
for the tower_task_image
and tower_web_image
, so the AWX container images are used instead, and set the deployment_type
to ``awx`:
---
spec:
...
deployment_type: awx
tower_task_image: ansible/awx_task:11.2.0
tower_web_image: ansible/awx_web:11.2.0
Depending on the cluster that you're running on, you may wish to use an Ingress
to access your tower or you may wish to use a Route
to access your tower. To toggle between these two options, you can add the following to your Tower custom resource:
---
spec:
...
tower_ingress_type: Route
OR
---
spec:
...
tower_ingress_type: Ingress
tower_hostname: tower.mycompany.com
By default, no ingress/route is deployed as the default is set to none
.
Depending on the type of tasks that you'll be running, you may find that you need the tower task pod to run as privileged
. This can open yourself up to a variety of security concerns, so you should be aware (and verify that you have the privileges) to do this if necessary. In order to toggle this feature, you can add the following to your Tower custom resource:
---
spec:
...
tower_task_privileged: true
If you are attempting to do this on an OpenShift cluster, you will need to grant the tower
ServiceAccount the privileged
SCC, which can be done with:
oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged -z tower
Again, this is the most relaxed SCC that is provided by OpenShift, so be sure to familiarize yourself with the security concerns that accompany this action.
If you need to use a specific storage class for Postgres' storage, specify tower_postgres_storage_class
in your Tower spec:
---
spec:
...
tower_postgres_storage_class: fast-ssd
If it's not specified, Postgres will store it's data on a volume using the default storage class for your cluster.
This Operator includes a Molecule-based test environment, which can be executed standalone in Docker (e.g. in CI or in a single Docker container anywhere), or inside any kind of Kubernetes cluster (e.g. Minikube).
You need to make sure you have Molecule installed before running the following commands. You can install Molecule with:
pip install 'molecule[docker]'
Running molecule test
sets up a clean environment, builds the operator, runs all configured tests on an example operator instance, then tears down the environment (at least in the case of Docker).
If you want to actively develop the operator, use molecule converge
, which does everything but tear down the environment at the end.
molecule test -s test-local
This environment is meant for headless testing (e.g. in a CI environment, or when making smaller changes which don't need to be verified through a web interface). It is difficult to test things like Tower's web UI or to connect other applications on your local machine to the services running inside the cluster, since it is inside a Docker container with no static IP address.
minikube start --memory 8g --cpus 4
minikube addons enable ingress
molecule test -s test-minikube
Minikube is a more full-featured test environment running inside a full VM on your computer, with an assigned IP address. This makes it easier to test things like NodePort services and Ingress from outside the Kubernetes cluster (e.g. in a browser on your computer).
Once the operator is deployed, you can visit the Tower UI in your browser by following these steps:
- Make sure you have an entry like
IP_ADDRESS example-tower.test
in your/etc/hosts
file. (Get the IP address withminikube ip
.) - Visit
http://example-tower.test/
in your browser. (Default admin login istest
/changeme
.)
There are a few moving parts to this project:
- The Docker image which powers Tower Operator.
- The
tower-operator.yaml
Kubernetes manifest file which initially deploys the Operator into a cluster.
Each of these must be appropriately built in preparation for a new tag:
Run the following command inside this directory:
operator-sdk build ansible/tower-operator:0.4.0
Then push the generated image to Docker Hub:
docker push ansible/tower-operator:0.4.0
Update the tower-operator version in two places:
deploy/tower-operator.yaml
: in theansible
andoperator
container definitions in thetower-operator
Deployment.build/chain-operator-files.yml
: theoperator_image
variable.
Once the versions are updated, run the playbook in the build/
directory:
ansible-playbook chain-operator-files.yml
After it is built, test it on a local cluster:
minikube start --memory 6g --cpus 4
minikube addons enable ingress
kubectl apply -f deploy/tower-operator.yaml
kubectl create namespace example-tower
kubectl apply -f deploy/crds/tower_v1beta1_tower_cr_awx.yaml
<test everything>
minikube delete
If everything works, commit the updated version, then tag a new repository release with the same tag as the Docker image pushed earlier.
This operator was originally built in 2019 by Jeff Geerling and is now maintained by the Ansible Team